IPL 2019: Match 21 – RR vs KKR – Who Said What

The encounter between The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and the Rajasthan Royals (RR) was dominated by the former, led by Dinesh Karthik. The visitors won the game comfortably by eight wickets at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur. With the thumping victory, the Knights won their fourth match out of five even as the Royals’ campaign went from bad to worse with their fourth defeat.

Smith dominates

After being out in to bat, the Royals could only muster 139 runs in their 20 overs and it was mostly because of Steve Smith’s gutsy knock of 73 runs from 59 balls with five fours and one over-boundary. He got his half-century in 44 balls and remained not. Apart from him, the Royals’ batsmen strained to find their feet. Ajinkya Rahane was the first wicket to go down as he was dismissed by Prasidh Krishna.

Jos Buttler scored 37 runs with five fours, but he never looked at his brutal. The English batsman took 34 balls to score those runs before falling prey to fellow countryman Harry Gurney, who replaced Lockie Ferguson in the KKR playing eleven. Even Ben Stokes couldn’t get bat to ball and ended up with a rather struggling 14-ball seven. It was Smith, who played some strokes and took the Royals to respectability.

All too easy for KKR

The Knights started the run-chase in a blistering manner as Chris Lynn and Sunil Narine threw their bats at everything and their partnership of 91 runs from 51 balls took the match out of RR’s hands. The duo didn’t have the best of tournaments, but today, they were in a different zone. Narine made utilization of the power-play and notched a blistering 47 runs from 25 balls with six boundaries and three sixes.

Lynn stayed until the very end and stayed not out on 50 runs from 32 balls with six boundaries and three over-boundaries. Shreyas Gopal removed both the openers in quick succession. Nevertheless, by then the writing was on the walls for the Royals. Robin Uthappa came and made 26 from 16 to take the Knight Riders home with as many as 37 balls to spare and help KKR to top the points table.

Harry Gurney, the Player of the Match, said

It was a pitch that suited my cutter options, so a nice one to make my debut on. I work hard on my variations and on my yorker and it is nice to have them in tough situations, although I didn’t use it much tonight. I am working on a knuckle ball but I don’t think it’ll be ready during the IPL, maybe somewhere in the English summer.

Dinesh Karthik, the KKR captain, said

It was a pretty clinical effort, the bowlers bowled well and the batsmen backed it up well too. In India you get to play on a lot of slow surfaces and you need to adapt to them. We need to improve in a few situations, but that’s always the case. Well Harry (Gurney) is a true professional, he’s played in leagues all over the world.

Ajinkya Rahane, the RR captain, said

I think on this wicket 150-160 would have been good. We had runs on the board and a slower wicket. But, I don’t think we bowled to our plans. Lots of learning from this game though. Such things happen in cricket, we need to learn from our mistakes. I think we should focus on playing good cricket and improve in the upcoming games. The wicket was going to be slow and we knew that, so we thought it was the right time to give him (Midhun) a game today.

Chris Lynn said

Rode my luck again. But we knew we had to go hard in the powerplay. It slowed up as the innings progressed. It was a nice powerplay and we were in cruise control after that. I nicked it, so I thought I was gone one way or the other. It happens in T20 cricket. Unbelievable (batting from Narine). He has done it for a couple of years now. We don’t talk too much. Just keep it simple. I am traditionally a slow starter. It is a long tournament, we are building nicely with important wins.

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