Disappointed after yet another defeat in the on-going season of the 2019 IPL, Kolkata Knight Riders captain Dinesh Karthik said it wasn’t right to say the team was over-dependent on Andre Russell to get them going. Russell came into bat with less than five overs to go, played nine deliveries and scored 15 runs while trying to up the ante after Chris Lynn had been dismissed, with the lower-order for company.
“I think that’s unfair to say,” Karthik said. “Today (Sunday) I think 160 was par if we’d bowled well. Even though Andre only got 15 runs today, the rest of them batted really well and brought us to a score that was defendable. But the fact that we didn’t bowl as well, and the wicket got better under lights, and two good players came out all guns blazing made things look very easy.”
“He had about five overs to face. When he came in, there were 27 balls and we’re looking to play him at a kind of slot where…I think he’s the kind of player even if he had played 10 balls, he’d have made an impact. The key is that we play that well at the top of the order that we set it up for him. There’s been no complaints from his side about the batting part of it. I think he’s been happy with the place where he’s going and he has a clear role in the team which he’s trying to achieve every time he goes out to bat.”
Placed sixth on the points table after losing five games on the bounce, KKR must win all of their four remaining matches to make the playoffs. In a bid to break the losing streak, Karthik dropped regulars Kuldeep Yadav and Robin Uthappa and said that their performances were not up to the mark.
“It’s always part of the IPL,” Karthik said. “Once you get on a run where you’ve lost a match it puts pressure on the next match. When you win, you can always find ways to win and when you lose, you sometimes find ways to lose. I think these are all the challenges a team always faces in a tournament like this.
