Kolkata Knight Riders showed their outstanding performance in the Eliminator match yesterday and defeated Rajasthan Royals by 25 runs. Batting first, KKR made 169 for 7 wickets and halted RR at 144. While the top order batsmen struggled to perform at Eden Gardens cricket stadium in Kolkata yesterday, skipper Dinesh Karthik and Andre Russell batted well in the end to reach a defendable total. While Ajinkya Rahane and Sanju Sampson scored good runs while chasing the target set by KKR, and also RR lost only four wickets, they eventually fell short of balls in the end to reach the winning run. Here are five talking points of yesterday’s match.
Failure of KKR’s top order batsmen
Although KKR is a powerful team and they have a great list of batsmen, yesterday their top order batsmen struggled and were not able to give a good start to the team. Opener Sunil Narine got out in the first over itself making only 4 runs, while the other opener Chris Lynn could only score 18 runs. Later, one down Robin Uthappa also got dismissed quickly at the score of 3. Nutish Rana, who came out at 4th position, tried to relieve the pressure of the team by hitting big shots, but he was caught out in the process at the score of 3. Due to this, KKR lost 4 wickets at the score of 51.
Dinesh Karthik and Shubham Gill’s partnership
Dinesh Karthik and Shubham Gill’s partnership of 55 runs came at the moment when KKR needed it the most. KKR were four down for 51 runs as none of their top order batsmen performed well. Karthik and Shuhham understood the sensitivity of the situation and kept their wicket safe and scored a partnership of 55 runs. This helped KKR to come out of the possibility of achieving a low score. Karthik scored 52 in the end while Shubham scored 28.
Andre Russell’s quick fire of 49 from 25 balls
When most of the batsmen of Kolkata Knight Riders could not batt well, Andre Russell came to the rescue in the end. With a strike rate of about 200, he smashed three fours and five sixes to make 49 off just 25 balls. He did his job of the finisher and gave KKR what they needed in the end. KKR made 169 for 7 wickets at the end of 20th over and Russell remained not out.
Batting of RR’s top order batsmen
While KKR’s top order batsmen could not perform well and the batting was managed by the lower order batsmen, the situation was almost opposite in the case of RR. Their openers Ajinkya Rahane and Rahul Tripathi performed well and RR lost their first wicket at the team score of 47. Rahul made 20 runs to get out on a delivery of Piyush Chawla. After that, the good batting of RR continued with the 62 runs partnership between Ajinkya Rahane and Sanju Sampson. Ajinkya scored 46 runs in the end while Shubham Gill scored 50. The second wicket of RR fell at the score of 109 and once it was expected that RR would easily take the match in their favour.
KKR’s 18th over
The 18th over of Prasidh Krishna was the turning point of the match. After the wicket of Sanju Sampson in the 17th over, RR needed to get 43 runs in the last three overs. At that time, Krishna bowled amazingly to give away only three runs in his over and he also took the wicket of Stuart Binny. Now with only 2 overs remaining, RR needed 40 runs to score which seemed quite a touch task. So the 17th over came out to be a turning point of the match.