It was a torrid afternoon for Kolkata Knight Riders as they were up against Delhi Capital. Having won the toss and opted to bowl first, KKR were on the backfoot from the very first stages of the match with DC openers Prithvi Shaw and David Warner leading the charge in the powerplay.
DC built a strong innings on the back of that confident start and although they looked shaky in the middle-order for a while, Axar Patel and Shardul Thakur ensured that they ended their innings on a high. With the help of pyrotechnics from both the all-rounders, DC crossed the 200-run mark and set KKR a target of 216.
Chasing that humongous target, KKR got off to another lacklustre start. They were at a score of 43/2 in the powerplay which already saw them losing their momentum for the run-chase. While Shreyas Iyer (54 off 33) and Nitish Rana (30 off 20) tried to get things going in the middle, they failed to steer the side in the proper direction.
As a result, KKR lost the match by 44 runs. This is their second defeat of IPL 2022 and captain Shreyas Iyer, who got his first fifty for KKR against his former side DC, acknowledged that there are still several issues in the side that need to be ironed out. With that being said, he defended his players and mentioned that they had to take the risk from the word go.
“I am absolutely not worried about the starts we are getting. When you are chasing 215, you need to get off to a really good start. You can’t think twice about what the bowlers are going to bowl. Because you have to have that attacking mindset right from ball one, and one mistake can get you out as a batsman. So, I wouldn’t blame anyone in this particular chase.
“But yes, we have this history in the last few games that we didn’t get really good starts. And obviously, that is also something we need to work on. This is just the early stage of the tournament, so once when we start practising more and executing stuff really well on the field, I think things would be taken care of pretty well,” Shreyas Iyer told reporters at the post-match press conference.
