Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) did all the hard work to restrict defending champions Mumbai Indians on 152. Their openers Shubman Gill (33) and Nitish Rana (57) gave a flying start to the team but what happened next has bamboozled many.
31 runs were needed off 30 balls when Nitish Rana departed on the last delivery of the 15th over. Star Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan was joined by vice-captain Dinesh Karthik and hard-hitting finisher Andre Russell was yet to arrive in the middle.
But KKR messed up everything, managing just 20 runs in the last 5 overs. They lost three wickets in the period as Mumbai Indians snatched a 10-run win from the jaw of defeat. Dinesh Karthik remained unbeaten on 8 off 11 balls.
Former India opener Virender Sehwag slammed KKR for the ‘shameful’ defeat and questioned the intent of Andre Russell and Dinesh Karthik.
“Eoin Morgan had given a statement that they will play that way (with postive intent) after the first game but it didn’t look like that when Andre Russell and Dinesh Karthik came in to bat. The way Russell and Karthik batted, it felt like they planned to take the game till the end and win it. But that didn’t happen. The batters who came before them be it Shakib Al Hasan, Eoin Morgan, Shubman Gill or Nitish Rana all of them played with positive intent,” Sehwag told Cricbuzz.
“Either Rana or Gill should have batted till the end. They had seen what had happened in the MI innings, despite getting off to a good start they could only manage 152.
“The runs per ball difference wasn’t much except for the last couple of overs. We saw how to lose a game that is almost won. You hardly get any game where you are chasing 152 and you need to score 36-odd runs in 6 overs with 6-7 wickets in hand. In such scenarios, teams prefer to end the game quickly to improve their net run rate. But KKR failed to do that and hampered their net-run rate,” Virender Sehwag concluded.
KKR will next face Virat Kohli-led RCB on Sunday.
