Showing all the signs of a champion team, the Kolkata Knight Riders turned around their performances and tormented the Delhi Capitals after a dismal show against the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the game preceding the last one. The team had started slowly but the pair of Nitish Rana and Sunil Narine found the timing to get going against the Delhi’s spinners and by the time the Capitals tried to stop them from running away with momentum, the duo had set a platform for the likes of Eoin Morgan to launch in the last few overs.
With the win, the KKR have staked claims on one of the spots in the top three and with three games remaining in the season, the men in purple and gold may well be on the track to seal a playoff spot.
Here we look at the views of both the captains and experts who expressed their reading of the game between the KKR and DC.
Discussing what went wrong for his team, the losing captain Shreyas Iyer said that his side was thoroughly outplayed in all the departments and that his bowlers failed to apply pressure on batsmen. He spoke highly of the choice of shots made by the KKR’s batsmen and especially Sunil Narine found appreciation in Iyer’s words for picking the bowlers intelligently to go for the big shots.
"Looking at the start, we should have put a lot of pressure on them and gone for wickets. But the way they batted, especially how Sunil Narine went after us. We could have executed the plans better. I think they chose the bowlers to go after really well. They were really good in shot selection. They outplayed us in pretty much every department. Kudos to their approach and mindset,” Iyer said to the host broadcaster Star in the post-match interaction.
Iyer pointed out the loss of openers’ wickets very early in the innings that derailed any chance of Capitals’ attempt to chase the mammoth score set by the KKR. However, he did not issue cautions to his teammates and rather asked them to bat freely imposing the survival mindset upon themselves. He was optimistic about the lessons the team had to learn before the knockout phase of the tournament begins.
“You need an amazing start when chasing 190. Losing two wickets in the Powerplay puts a lot of pressure on the others. We need to play with freedom and not have a survival mindset. Obviously we are disappointed with the loss, but I am glad it is happening at this point of time. There are a lot of learnings from this game,” Iyer added.
On the other hand, the winning captain Eoin Morgan hailed all the stars of the win against the Capitals such as Sunil Narine, Nitish Rana and Varun Chakravarthy. He also said that the break the team got after their last game against the RCB which turned out to be a debacle actually helped the side regroup for the game.
He expressed satisfaction at the comeback of Sunil Narine as a proper all-rounder and also credited the coach Brendon McCullum for playing his cards in bringing back Narine into the fold. “We had had a nice couple of days to reflect on things. In such a compact tournament, it can be easy to get caught up. Great of Sunil to come back and play as a proper allrounder. And Nitish Rana and him adding all the runs. The decision to bat Narine there is all the coach. He likes to play his cards. It is all Brendon,” Morgan said in the post-match presentation ceremony.
Morgan argued the need for having a longer batting line up in tournaments such as the IPL instead of a strong one behind his move to bat lower down the order. “Given the nature of the tournament, it is not a tournament where sides get 100 in top 10. You need a longer batting line-up than a strong one. That is why I am batting lower,” Morgan added.
Varun Chakravarthy had an awesome game, taking a fifer against the Delhi Capitals and the captain Morgan had some good words to recognise the role he has played for the KKR in IPL 2020. “Varun is such a humble guy. He just goes about his work. Throughout the tournament, he has been our standout performer,” Morgan said of Chakravarthy.
Calling the game at the time when the pair of Narine and Rana were taking on the Delhi’s bowlers, Harsha Bhogle said that if the KKR go on to secure a playoff birth, the team management will do well to remember the partnership between the two left-handers in reviving the team’s campaign in the IPL 2020.
He took to his Twitter account to show displeasure about the KKR’s tactics of holding back Eoin Morgan for the latter overs to control the innings. However, he accepted in the end that the tactics worked well today as Nitish Rana and Sunil Narine put on a show allowing Morgan to finish strong in the end overs.
KKR bowled well and restricted the Delhi Capitals well below the target of 195 set by them and Harsha was not to miss out on admitting the kind of turnaround the KKR had produced in the game.
Former Indian opener Aakash Chopra praised the KKR management for utilising the bowling resources in the IPL 2020 albeit they have received a lot of flak for the mismanagement in the games when tactics did not work. He pointed out the contrast the team has seen in the last two games with facing a humiliation against the RCB in the last game and coming back by decimating the DC in the next game.
He also spoke highly of Varun Chakravarthy who spun a web around the Delhi’s batting line up to earn a win for the KKR.
Chopra was of the opinion that the KKR’s win over the DC may well have killed the chances for many teams looking to catch up with them in a race to a playoff spot.
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