IPL 2019: Match 13 – KXIP vs RR – Who Said What

At one point in time, Delhi Capitals (DC) were cruising towards the target set by Kings XI Punjab (KXIP). Nevertheless, the home team didn’t give up the ghost and came back brilliantly to win the encounter. The Ravi Ashwin-captained franchise emerged victorious by 14 runs and moved to the second position of the points table in this edition’s Indian Premier League (IPL).

Miller guides the Kings

After losing the toss and being put in to bat first, the Kings scored 166 in their 20 overs. The hosts sprang a surprise and sent Sam Curran to open the batting with KL Rahul. The experiment worked to some extent as the Englishman raced way to a 10-ball 20 before being dismissed by Sandeep Lamichhane. Rahul was dismissed by Chris Morris. A direct hit from Shikhar Dhawan got rid of Mayank Agarwal.

Sarfaraz Khan and David Miller put their heads down for a 62-run stand. Lamichhane got rid of Sarfaraz after he notched 39 runs from 29 balls. A couple of overs later, Miller had to go back to the hut following his knock of 43 with four boundaries and a couple of sixes. Mandeep Singh churned out a quickfire 29 to take Punjab to a competitive score. For the Capitals, Morris was the most prolific with three wickets.

Curran comes to the party

The run-chase didn’t start on a great note for the Capitals as Ravi Ashwin nipped out Prithvi Shaw, last match’s Player of the Match. Shikhar Dhawan and Shreyas Iyer didn’t throw in the towel and added 61 vital runs. Hardus Viljoen castled Iyer for 28 to break the stand. Ravi Ashwin trapped Dhawan in front to bring Punjab back into the match. Dhawan scored 30 patient runs with four boundaries.

Rishabh Pant and Colin Ingram got Delhi within touching distance, bring down the required rate to almost a run-a-ball. Ingram and Pant scored 38 and 39 respectively, but after their dismissal, Delhi lost wickets in heaps and were pushed back. Mohammed Shami picked up two wickets. But the performance of the day came from Sam Curran, who became the youngest to pick up an IPL hat-trick.

Shreyas Iyer, the Capitals’ captain, said

Really disappointing. With the way we were going, we came ball to ball and to lose from there, really disappointing. We didn’t play smart cricket and Punjab outplayed us in all the departments. They were really cool and calm in that situation. I am really speechless. It is a crucial match and losing such matches is not going to benefit us. The way Ingram was going, with ball to ball, it is really difficult to see us losing wickets like that from outside and the batsmen not taking initiative to win the game. But it is good as well as it happened early in the tournament.

We can correct the errors and come back strong. We didn’t bowl that well in the powerplay, they came really hard us but we defended good after that. We gave away 60 odd runs after they reached 100. That is a positive for us. It is really going to be important for us to stay motivated. These are the small factors we have to work hard on. Mentally we have train ourselves on how to finish the games. We are getting good starts but need to focus on winning the games.

Ravi Ashwin, the KXIP captain, said

Not may times, you defend. When Rishabh hit the six, we just needed to hang in there. Credit to Shami and Curran. We were probably 25 runs short. We backed ourselves to defend with three spinners. All in all, dew also came in and played a factor. We were gonna bat first. We thought Chris wasn’t there. We wanted to give him all the license up front. We thought there was grip there. We are quite a bunch with experience and a lot of youngsters. We have to keep ourselves fresh. We are having a very good experience. I have never seen a crowd like this in Mohali. It was extremely loud.

Sam Curran, the Player of the Match, said

Great win for the guys. I tried to put a performance for my team. Luckily enough, we scraped to 166, all the six bowlers were excellent. I have worked a lot on my batting over the last few months. I like to work hard on my batting, bowling, and fielding. I have opened in school cricket, but think that was the first time in professional cricket. Hopefully, we keep winning games. I didn’t really know (regarding the hat-trick). The crowd got really loud, I couldn’t hear myself. Ash told me what to do. Ryan Harris was standing at the third man region. Against the Iocal batters, I had to ask our players, “Where does he hit?”. Shami got two amazing overs in the end which helped.

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