Comedy of errors by Kolkata Knight Riders, Gambhir does the juggling act

Kolkata Knight Riders are playing their first home game at Eden Gardens against the current table-toppers Kings XI Punjab. KKR managed to pull things back towards the end of the innings as Umesh Yadav, who was playing his first game of the season today, picked three wickets in an over. KKR are set a target of 171, relatively lesser than what they looked like chasing once.

However, KKR were sloppy towards the end of the innings especially in the last 7 balls of the innings. They did something which you normally associate with school kids.

On the last ball of the 19^th over, Mohit Sharma stroked the ball over the mid-off fielder and immediately called for two. Umesh Yadav chased the ball and threw it flat and hit the stumps on the striker’s end directly, though Mohit had made his ground before the ball hit the stumps. The ball ricocheted off the stumps towards the short fine fielder and seeing an opportunity of an extra run, Mohit called Aaron, his batting partner, for another run and this time the fine leg fielder and debutant Grandhomme had a shy at the stumps but Trent Boult the bowler couldn’t collect the ball. As funny as it may sound, the ball went back to the place where it was hit on the first occasion. Umesh Yadav was there to do the tidying up again and threw it back to Boult. The batsmen had run all-four. It was proper school-boys cricket on display.

If this wasn’t enough, the skipper Gautam Gambhir got into the act. He was under a skier on the last ball of the innings and looked set to take it easily as it was a straight forward catch. But it took Gambhir 4 attempts to finally grab it and he had almost gone a full 360 degrees in the process.

This is certainly you don’t expect from professional cricketers but such is the beauty of the game. It is a great leveller

You can watch the HD video here.