Follow UsRyan Rickelton played a gem of an innings, smashing 62 off 41 in his third Indian Premier League (IPL) game against Kolkata Knight Riders on March 31 (Monday). However, what caught the attention of the left-handed opener was Suryakumar Yadav’s pyrotechnics, which he witnessed during his 30-run partnership with the MI batter.
It was during that partnership when the right-handed Indian batter had absolutely smashed the ball towards the fine leg boundary, which surprised Rickelton, who jokingly went towards Quinton de Kock in amazement.
“He [Suryakumar] is a joke, stuff that I can’t do, stuff that I can’t dream of. He has hit that shot millions of times. I’m not going to try it, but I’m glad that he is in our team,” Rickelton praised Suryakumar Yadav in the post-match presentation.
It was Rickelton ’s first appearance at the Wankhede Stadium, and the left-hander insisted that he was ‘lucky’ to get some runs on the board.
“I took my time, I just had to lay a bat on it, to be honest, the ball was moving around, and I was lucky to have got some runs. Chatting to the guys back in South Africa about the Wankhede does a bit, it’s challenging, but looking forward to getting out again and trying to maximise my opportunities. It’s unbelievable, I have never been to the Wankhede before, the crowd turned the stadium blue, definitely going to enjoy my time here,” Rickelton added.
On the other hand, KKR’s skipper Ajinkya Rahane put it down in clear words that it was a ‘collective batting failure’.
“Collective batting failure. It was a good wicket bat, as I mentioned in the toss. 180-190 would have been good on this wicket. It has a very good bounce. Sometimes, you have to use the pace and bounce. We got to learn really fast from this game,” Rahane said.
During the first innings, KKR were reduced to 41/4 in the powerplay. As it turned out, KKR could only score 116 runs, a total that seemed far away from a respectable total as MI chased the total down in under 13 overs.
“Couldn't do much with the ball. They tried their best. But not much runs on the board. We kept on losing wickets. Four wickets in the powerplay. It was difficult to consolidate and get that total on the board. You need that partnership going. You need one batsman to stay till the end.”