Lucknow Super Giants captain KL Rahul admitted they received a proper hammering after their eight-wicket loss (with 26 balls to spare) against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata on Sunday. LSG was restricted to 161 after they were asked to bat first by KKR captain Shreyas Iyer.
Mitchell Starc, who went for 18 runs in his first two overs, bounced back in style. The Australian gun fast bowler returned with impressive figures of 3-28 in his quota of four overs. Starc dismissed Deepak Hooda with Ramandeep Singh taking a fine diving catch to his right at point.
Earlier in the innings, Vaibhav Arora had Quinton de Kock caught at wide slip. Starc then got the big wicket of in-form Nicholas Pooran and also dismissed Arshad Khan. Sunil Narine also bowled a terrific spell of 1-17.
On the other hand, KKR opener Phillip Salt scored his fourth IPL fifty, getting to the personal milestone in 25 balls. The attacking right-hander scored an unbeaten knock of 89 off just 47 balls with the help of 14 fours and three maximums. Moreover, captain Shreyas Iyer scored a run-a-ball 38 and added 120 runs with Salt.
KL Rahul said after the game, “One of those days, it was a proper hammering. Games like these are tough to digest and we have seen in IPL and every team goes through that. We will try and work out what went wrong and come back better. The ball started nipping around a lot more in the second innings, the shots that we played in the first innings, didn’t execute well and kept losing wickets in bunches and we could have got a lot more runs and that’s where we missed, and lost the game.”
Meanwhile, West Indies fast bowler Shamar Joseph made his IPL debut for LSG. Joseph went wicketless and conceded 47 runs in his quota of four overs and Rahul feels the youngster needs to work on his line and length.
Rahul added, “Shamar Joseph is bowling pretty quick, Shamar was very excited and wanted to bowl fast, sprayed it around a little bit but that happens when you are playing your first game in the IPL. He needs to work on consistency in line and length, obviously got the ball to swing and seam around in the powerplay.”
LSG has now lost their last two matches and they will look to return to winning ways against defending champions Chennai Super Kings at the Ekana Cricket Stadium, Lucknow on Friday.
