MATCH STORY
Follow UsImagine having an ‘okay-ish’ day with the bat and still ending up scoring 222. Well, that’s sort of what Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) did on April 21 (Sunday) at Eden Gardens.
On paper, KKR have one of the most destructive batting units in the competition, but most of their big hitters did not quite light up the Eden Gardens.
Sunil Narine, Rinku Singh and Andre Russell, between them, faced 51 off the 120 deliveries, which is roughly 42.5% of the innings. Usually, when that happens, sixes galore. Yet that wasn’t the case against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) today as the trio, combinedly, hit just a solitary six in 51 deliveries.
Narine had no answers to RCB’s meticulous plans. He faced 15 deliveries and ended up scoring just 10 runs, unable to cope with yorkers and wide lines that they deployed. It was his fourth-slowest knock in any T20 in which he faced 15+ balls in an innings.
Russell, meanwhile, was unable to get going despite having ample time to settle. The big Jamaican, who walked out to bat in the 14th over, faced 20 balls but did not hit a single six. It was only the second instance in the IPL of Russell failing to hit a six after facing 20+ balls in an innings.
Yet despite all this, the Knight Riders ended up posting 222 on the board, their joint fifth-highest total ever.
You can argue it’s a reflection of the kind of pitches that have been on offer in this edition of the IPL, but, equally, it’s also a reflection of the construct of KKR’s batting line-up, which, in a way, is the perfect modern-day batting unit — a deep line-up largely filled with intent merchants who value runs more than their wickets and keep ‘hunting for leather’.
Nothing encapsulated this more than Venkatesh Iyer’s innings today.
Iyer walked in to bat at No.4, with KKR having lost both Narine and Phil Salt in the space of six balls. There were only four balls left in the powerplay when he walked in.
Despite the circumstances, Iyer came in and dispatched the first two balls he faced to the boundary. He made his intentions clear from ball one, dancing down the track and hitting Yash Dayal straight over his head for a four.
As it turned out, Iyer only lasted six more balls, but ultimately, his little cameo played a significant part in KKR posting 222, for it ensured that the side kept the momentum going after the double blow of Salt and Narine.
Some things are easier said than done.
One such thing is this ideal T20 template of having one anchor, and having all the other batters go hammer and tongs around the said anchor.
But KKR, this season, have come close to cracking that particular code.
Seven games into KKR’s 2024 campaign, nine batters have scored 50+ runs for them. Astonishingly enough, Shreyas Iyer is the only batter among the nine to have a strike rate less than 150.
What’s interesting to note here is that, among these nine, Shreyas has batted the second most number of balls (150). It’s been a conscious ploy from the side to let the skipper be the stabiliser, and have the other batters bash around him.
Today against RCB, KKR felt the benefits of the basher-basher-anchor-basher-basher set-up.
Salt played his most explosive knock in a KKR shirt yet, and got the side off to an absolute flyer. Salt’s scorching knock meant that KKR posted 75 in the powerplay despite Narine batting 42% of the powerplay and scoring just 10 runs.
In the form of Salt and Venky Iyer, KKR realized the benefits of bashers but the hosts felt the value of an anchor when Shreyas Iyer held the innings together after the departure of his namesake.
After 50 balls, KKR were going at 11.82 runs an over but they were at the serious risk of not batting out 20 overs, having lost four wickets pretty early. With only Russell and Ramandeep yet to come, the Knight Riders needed someone to bat out time and hold the innings together to not only protect the finishers, but give them the ideal platform to flourish towards the end.
On the day, skipper Shreyas did just that. KKR were in a spot of bother at 97/4 in 8.2 overs, but by the time their skipper departed, the score was 179/6 in the 17.2 overs, with the two finishers (Russell and Ramandeep) batting in the middle.
This IPL season has not been kind to anchors, but in the clash against RCB today, the KKR skipper kind of reaffirmed the importance of a consolidator. He came in, stopped the collapse, built a partnership that rescued the side and did so while going at a strike rate of nearly 140. He set up the innings for the finishers to blossom, and luckily for KKR, that ended up working out, with Ramandeep blasting 24 off 9 balls.
In general, the best teams in the world — across sport — find a way to win even on ordinary days. Today was by no means one of KKR’s best days, but they still ended up getting over the line.
Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy, and Russell bowled out of their skin to bowl the side to victory, but ultimately, those runs on the board enabled the Knight Riders to seal two valuable points.
If KKR are going to out-bat teams on ‘ordinary’ days like this one, then well, the rest of the competitors better be on red alert.
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