Kolkata Knight Riders suffered a terrible outing with the bat against Royal Challengers Bangalore. Harshal Patel, Wanindu Hasaranga and Akash Deep bowled out of their skins to bundle out KKR for just 128 runs. Only Andre Russell managed to cross the 20-run mark for Knight Riders in the match.
Defending such a low score was always going to be tough ask, especially when there are batters like Faf du Plessis and Virat Kohli in the opposition camp. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before RCB would reach the target.
However, KKR struck early with wickets in the powerplay thanks to Umesh Yadav’s continued brilliance. Tim Southee also contributed with important wickets while Sunil Narine bowled an extremely tight four-over spell.
Despite losing the match in the final over, Kolkata Knight Riders captain Shreyas Iyer was extremely proud of the fight and grit shown by his team. “I really found this game exciting, because before getting into the second phase, I just spoke to my boys and told them that this game is going to define our character and attitude on the field.
“It does not matter if we defend the total or not, but the way we fight it on the ground, that is really going to reflect our mentality. I’m really proud of the way we played this game and took it to the last over,” Iyer said during the post-match presentation ceremony.
Royal Challengers Bangalore’s approach to the spin-bowling duo of Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy in the middle overs decided the game. While Narine bowled an extremely disciplined spell and conceded just 12 runs while also picking up a wicket, Varun wasn’t on the same page and lacked control in his bowling.
The mystery spinner from Tamil Nadu conceded 33 runs but managed to redeem himself with the wicket of Shahbaz Ahmed towards the end.
There were a few eyebrows raised when Shreyas Iyer asked Venkatesh Iyer to bowl the penultimate over. This was Iyer’s first over in IPL 2022 and it came at a very crucial juncture in the match. Explaining his decision, Shreyas said, “Well, it was really tough at that moment because I wanted to get my best bowlers out there and get a few wickets, but that did not work out really well.
“You know, kudos to their batsmen, they played really well in the middle and they took out the toughest phase as soon as possible. At the end, I decided to go with Venky because he has also got really good bowling at the International level and I need to back them, especially at the start of the tournament.”
