The Kolkata Knight Riders’ tinkering with their team combination continued. But a collective effort from the bowlers followed by an unbroken 66-run stand by Nitish Rana (48 not out) and Rinku Singh (42 not out) ensured the result went in the Knights’ favour on this occasion at the Wankhede in Mumbai on Monday.
Opting to bowl first after winning the toss, the bowlers were disciplined for most part that restricted Rajasthan Royals to a modest total of 152 for 5. Thereafter, overcoming a minor hiccup, both Nitish and Rinku played efficient, intelligent cricket to take their team to a seven-wicket win with five balls to spare.
This victory is certainly a significant one for the Knights, especially as they went into the game after five defeats in a row.
Importantly, the way the Knights performed in this game, they made sure that the two of their retained players (Venkatesh Iyer and Varun Chakravarthy) who got dropped weren’t missed.
The Wankhede pitches have been very much in favour of batsmen all this while in IPL 2022, but the one in use on Monday didn’t really make strokeplay that easy. And that’s where Umesh Yadav (1/24), debutant left-arm spinner Anukul Roy (1/28), Shivam Mavi (1/33), who replaced Harshit Rana, and, of course, Sunil Narine (0/19) cashed in, as the Royals’ innings never quite gained the momentum it required.
In reply, the new opening pair for the Knights, Aaron Finch and Baba Indrajith, couldn’t contribute much before captain Shreyas Iyer (34) too departed at a critical phase. Nitish, however, was looking good.
In Rinku, he found more than an able assist. Rinku, averaging 64.08 and 50.50 for Uttar Pradesh in first-class and List A cricket, respectively, scored over 60 per cent of the runs in the match-winning partnership that took pressure off Nitish.
Royals captain Sanju Samson (54 off 49 balls) did quite well with the bat. But he erred in not bringing on Yuzvendra Chahal, one of the main wicket-takers of his team, early into the attack.
When Chahal came on to bowl, both Shreyas and Nitish were well set and they had few problems in tackling the leg-spinner.
Flawed strategy
With Hetmyer contributing consistently as a finisher, why the Royals sent Riyan Parag ahead of him was something inexplicable. Hetmyer went out to bat with only three overs remaining, yet he tried his best to procure as many runs as possible off those few balls.
