IPL 2021 | Brian Lara backs Virat Kohli, says would've asked him to continue as skipper of RCB

Dan Christian, wife face abuse after RCB's elimination, he requests to 'leave her out of it'

Royal Challengers Bangalore player Dan Christian and his wife were subjected to abuse on social media after the side suffered a defeat against KKR in the eliminator in Sharjah. Christian had a disappointing outing on Monday after he only managed to score 9 runs in 8 deliveries and was then hit for 29 runs in 10 balls that included a 22-run over. “I didn’t have a great game tonight, but that’s sport,” he wrote. “However please leave her out of it.” The Bangalore franchise was restricted to 138/7 in 20 overs after Sunil Narine ripped through the RCB batting order and scalped a four-wicket haul during the course. The KKR side then started off the chase in a decent manner but lost some wickets at a quick succession to get reduced to 79/3 before Narine and Nitish Rana stitched a stand of 31 runs for the fourth wicket. Narine hammered Christian for three maximums in the 12th over to help his side take the upper hand. He was eventually undone by Mohammed Siraj for 26 off 15 deliveries. Later, the Knight Riders needed 7 off the last over and Kohli once again handed the ball to Christian who was hit for a boundary on the very first ball by Shakib. The Kolkata team eventually went over the line on the fourth ball of the final over to win the match by 4 wickets. They will now play Delhi Capitals in the second qualifier on Wednesday in Sharjah.

'Absolutely disgusting': Glenn Maxwell slams online trolls after RCB bow out of IPL 2021

Royal Challengers Bangalore’s all-rounder Glenn Maxwell has slammed the online trolls for abusing him and the team after the side suffered a defeat in the eliminator against Kolkata Knight Riders on Monday. ” Some of the garbage that has been flowing on social media is absolutely disgusting! We are human beings who are giving our best each and every day. Try being a decent person maybe instead of spreading abuse…” The right-handed player also praised the “real fans” for showing support to the franchise during the campaign. “Thank you to the Real fans that shared love and appreciation for the players giving their all! Unfortunately, there are some horrible people out there that make social media a horrible place to be. It is unacceptable!!! Please don’t be like them!!!” RCB who batted first had a decent start to the proceedings as Devdutt Padikkal and captain Virat Kohli put up 49 runs on the board for the first wicket but Padikkal’s departure saw the team losing wickets at regular intervals in the middle overs. KKR spinner Sunil Narine thoroughly dominated the Bangalore batting line up after he picked up a four-wicket haul during the course as the side was restricted to 138/7 in 20 overs. Later, the Knight Riders too started off the chase pretty well but lost a few wickets in quick succession and were reduced to 79/3 when Narine walked in the middle and hammered Dan Christian for three maximums in the 12th over that certainly changed the course of the match. The left-hander scored a 15-ball 26 before he was cleaned up by Mohammed Siraj. KKR needed 7 off the last over and Christian was once again given the ball with Shakib and Eoin Morgan at the crease. Shakib struck a four off the first delivery of the over bringing down the equation to three required off five balls. Kolkata eventually completed the task pretty easily by 4 wickets and with a couple of balls to spare. The Eoin Morgan-led side will now play Delhi Capitals in the second qualifier on Wednesday in Sharjah.

What Experts Said as Sunil Narine draws curtains on Virat Kohli’s captaincy stint at Bangalore

Royal Challengers Bangalore were blown away by a Sunil Narine storm at Sharjah on Monday, 11 October in the Eliminator of the Indian Premier League 2021. The Trinidadian starred both with bat and ball and brought a premature end to Virat Kohli’s stint as an RCB captain in the cash-rich league. Coming into the game, RCB were expected to pull away after having a brilliant season this time around, but on the night succumbed to the class of a modern day great, who simply was indomitable at the 22-yards in the UAE. Choosing to bat first on yet another sluggish T20 track, RCB were off to a flying start against the Knight Riders but failed to keep momentum once the powerplay ended. However, they could not hold onto the same and got choked out by some tremendous bowling from the trio of Lockie Ferguson, Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine. First, the KKR bowlers made it difficult to score runs outside the powerplay and then kept on picking wickets on a regular basis from the 10th over. This meant that RCB were stifled out, and they could only get to 139 runs despite closing the powerplay at 53 runs for the loss of just 1 wicket. RCB still had the tactical advantage over KKR, who have had a misfiring middle order throughout the season. And with the track slowing down considerably, it would seem that RCB were going to make a game out of this. However, things did not really go their way and a good opening stand between Shubman Gill and Venkatesh Iyer provided Kolkata with a strong base off which they could go on to win this game. The young openers matched RCB neck to neck and put up 41 runs inside 6 overs. Gill was the first one to depart having been outfoxed by a sensational Harshal Patel slower ball. The middle overs did provide for a good combination with RCB bowlers doing a good job to stifle out the opponent. Just when it seemed like the scoreboard pressure was getting the better of KKR batters, RCB captain decided to bowl Australian Dan Christian in the 12th over and that is when all hell broke loose. Christian, a specialist cutter bowler, got the full treatment from newcomer Sunil Narine, with the Trinidadian depositing him for three sixes in his first three balls. At a point when KKR required 60 from 54 deliveries, that over opened the floodgates reducing the pressure to 38 off 48 balls. From here it was just an easy task to tick away runs and KKR did that with ease with the likes of Dinesh Karthik, Eoin Morgan and Shakib al Hasan. They might not have looked assured while grabbing hold of each run, but they did enough to close the game with two balls remaining. The game marked the end of Kohli’s captaincy and his 9-year trophy drought at the RCB. It also made RCB the only team to have been knocked out of the Eliminator in back to back seasons, a record that Kohli could have done away with. Captains Comments Speaking at the end of the game, Kohli summarised the loss stating that the 15 run over (Dan Christian to Narine) deflated their changes in the game. he praised the KKR spinner and stated that their high quality bowling ended up being the difference on the night. "Their spinners dominated the game in the middle overs. They kept taking wickets there. We had a great start and probably should've tried to build on. It was more about quality bowling instead of poor batting. (Bowling effort of RCB) Outstanding. Been the hallmark this season. But tonight that big over in the middle deflated our chances in the middle. We fought till the last. But 15 runs left out there with the bat and a couple of big overs with the ball." Winning captain Eoin Morgan echoed the sentiments and heaped praises on his spinners stating that someone like Sunil Narine makes t look ridiculously easy when he is on song. "Narine makes it look very easy. He bowled outstandingly well. Throughout the innings, we continued to take wickets. Good start from the bowlers, and we were in control in the chase. A quite like it [having three spinners around[. It is a huge privilege when there are world-class spinners around. They continue to get better and better." He signed off by saying that for the KKR batting unit, it is all about adjusting to the conditions and they are confident that they will carry their learnings into the next game. Experts had a lot to observe in the game, and here is a compilation of the best tweets reflecting how things went about in Sharjah on Monday night. The Sharjah pitch has been talked about a lot since the restart of the IPL and it was no different tonight. It looked like it had been put together just about to make things easy for the team batting first before the true nature would be revealed. The pitch played out the same way and it would be dreadful if the next game were to be played in this strip again. Before all the mayhem took over, it is worth remembering that it was the New Zealand speedster Lockie Ferguson that started the RCB downfall. He picked up the wicket of Dedutt Padikkal and slowed down Virat Kohli who was looking in great touch. Ayaz Memon took notice of the same and pointed out what a belter of a season the speedster has had. Padikkal’s form since the restart of the IPL has been a worry for a section of the RCB fans. A Twitter user had some stats to back up the same and argued that Padikkal really needs to sort this critical deficiency in his batting out. Once Padikkal was removed, KKR built immense pressure on the RCB batting line-up using the magic of Varun Chakravarthy. This allowed Narine to bowl more attacking lines, keeping the length of the ball around 4-6 meters from the batsman. Not only did Narine manage to dismiss KS Bharat in his first over. He returned with consistent wickets in his second, third and fourth over as well, dousing the entire RCB firepower. Popular cricket account on Twitter, Johns pointed out that Varun Chakravarthy has had an impeccable record in this edition of the tournament and his tight lines have really borne fruit for other bowlers who have bowled around him. On the night, Sunil Narine also had another unique stat to his name, pointed out by statistician Kaustubh Gudipati. The game on the night came down to the final over where KKR needed 7 runs off the final 6 balls. It could have been 9, if only the ICC could look into a grey area of its ruling. Cricket Twitter has been vocal about this for a while now and once again an instance came to the fore that at the moment when an LBW shout was referred back to the third umpire for a DRS check, the runs (if taken) were no accounted for, despite the ball being counted. This meant that RCB were two runs short on the night, a margin might or might not have made difference at the end of the day. Returning to bat in the second innings when KKR found themselves in trouble, Sunil Narine once again dragged the team out of the hole, putting out yet another man of the match performance in the cash-rich league. He absolutely destroyed Dan Christian who was bowling his first over and took the game away from the Bangalore based franchise in a jiffy. All was not lost for the RCB though, as Harshal Patel became the joint highest wicket-taker in a single IPL season, equalling the record of Dwayne Bravo. This game marks the end of an era for RCB, who could be building a completely new core under a new captain in the next year's mega auction. Kaustubh put up something interesting on the night about Virat Kohli, something that truly sums up his journey as an RCB captain. With this win, KKR now are into the 2nd Qualifier of the Indian Premier League 2021 and are now going to face last year's finalists Delhi Capitals.

IPL 2021 | Eliminator: Hits & Flops as Narine sails Knight Riders’ fairy tale comeback across another hurdle

“It was Sunil Narine’s world today and all of us were living in it,” might only be the apt description of the feat achieved by the magician with the ball. He also turned out to be the crusader with the bat today for the Kolkata Knight Riders as they defeated Royal Challengers Bangalore by four wickets to book their birth in the second Qualifier. With this victory, in which they chased down 138, the Knight Riders have also come one place closer to what could be termed as a fairytale comeback, from the first leg of the Indian Premier League. At the end of the first leg, the team from Kolkata was sitting at the seventh position in the table with just two wins out of seven games. While Narine was definitely the man of the hour with his amazing all-around performance, there were others too who managed to make themselves on a day truly dominated by the Trinidadian. Some did with impressive performances while others with below par. All of them however will be discussed in the section called Hits and Flops. Hits Sunil Narine The wily old fox was just phenomenal today. When Narine got the ball in hand in the 10th over i.e. after the mayhem of the Powerplay in which RCB were really good and also just after when Virat Kohli and Srikar Bharat, the two Bangalore batters had started to struggle in finding gaps. In his very first over, the mystery spinner removed Bharat who looked in all sorts of problems anyways. Skipper Morgan then decided to change the ends of Narine and when he came back in his second spell, Kohli’s stumps were castled by an off-spinner that barged through his defences. In his third over he broke through the defences of yet another great, this time it was AB de Villiers. The fact that other bowlers were bowling equally well made Narine concentrate more on wicket-taking than run-saving plans and as a result, in his last over, he got rid of Glenn Maxwell and thus finally the dreams of RCB reaching at least 150 had to be put back. When Narine came out to bat, the situation was equally tensed with the top three of the KKR batting lineup returned back to the pavilion, the ball doing all sorts of things off the wicket and the remaining batters not in great form, while his team needed to get the 60 runs anyhow. Virat helped solve the problem for KKR and Narine as he introduced a cutter bowler Dan Christain into the attack. The 33-year-old took the opportunity in a flash and hit the Aussie bowler for three sixes in an over to get the match out of the reach of the Bangalore side, before eventually getting out on 26 from 15 balls. Lockie Ferguson If Narine was the fire that KKR had today, Lockie Ferguson was the one who started it. With the wicket of Devdutt Padikkal, the Kiwi paid up for the expensive over before that. After breaking the partnership, Ferguson then came back in the 19th over and removed Shahbaz Ahmed to stop the flow of runs. Shahbaz would have been out in the Sunil Narine over itself if Shubaman Gill wouldn’t have dropped a sitter near the boundary line at mid-wicket. That catch would have helped the Caribbean man get his second five-wicket haul in IPL history. Anyways, Ferguson finished his spell with figures of 2/30 in four overs and was the only one apart from Narine to get among wickets for KKR. Yuzvendra Chahal It sure was a wicket that helped spinners. And thus it was a mystery as to why Shahbaz Ahmed was never introduced to the attack by skipper Kohli. However, the one spinner that was introduced, turned out to be simply brilliant, bowling with an economy of just four throughout his four-over spell. Chahal created pressure and with the help of his googly, was able to dismiss Rahul Tripathi and Nitish Rana, the two players who have been in good touch in this tournament. But in the end, it wasn’t good enough to win the game. Flops Dan Christian Playing Christian in the playing XI was in itself controversial given the fact that he hasn’t been good in any of the games that he has played. With the likes of Kyle Jamieson present in the squad, it really blew everyone’s mind as to why has a 38-year-old still been playing in the XI. Christian was bad today as well as he not only gave away 29 runs in just 10 balls that he bowled but also got run out in the 20th over while batting, making only nine runs off 8 balls. Thus a poor selection by the RCB management eventually resulted in losing their most important game of this season. Virat Kohli More than for being unable to get his strike rate up or even equal to powerplay period, post it, what lacked today in the RCB skipper was his game reading skills. Not bowling your spinner when the bowling is doing all sorts of deeds on the wicket and when two of your own spinners are showing it, was the most basic error Kohli made. Shahbaz Ahmed would have been the go-to man instead of Dan Christian in all probability. As far as his weakness to off-spin was concerned, it was once again exposed by Sunil Narine as he got the Indian skipper bowled, breaching his defences. Thus, apart from a decent start, Kohli, who has now captained his last game in the IPL, as he himself said that he would stay with RCB but won’t captain it, was off-colour totally. KKR would now welcome Delhi Capitals in Sharjah and have more than decent enough chance to reach the final in Dubai, especially with the way they have been bowling.