Twitter Reactions: Rajasthan Royals pull of a great escape, courtesy Kartik Tyagi's brilliant last over

Punjab Kings and Rajasthan Royals, too such teams who can ill afford any slip ups in the UAE leg of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021, clashed in Dubai on Tuesday. And the team that made more mistakes eventually lost the game. It was that sort of a night where captaincy was poor, a review was unnecessarily wasted and a team dropped a key player as many as three times. But then, it was the day for Punjab Kings to choke majorly as they couldn’t score 8 runs in last two overs and 4 off last courtesy Kartik Tyagi.

Rajasthan Royals dramatically managed to get over the line to register their fourth win while the KL Rahul-led side lost their sixth game of the season in nine games. It was the opening duo of Mayank Agarwal and KL Rahul that set up the 186-run chase for the Kings. Rahul rode his luck having dropped thrice while Agarwal overcame his rusty start and then played some amazing shots in the V.

He unfurled the inside out shot as well off the pacers and smacked the spinners down the ground to display brilliant skills without playing any rash shot. Rahul missed out on his half-century and got out on 49 in the 12th over but had added 120 runs for the opening wicket by then. Agarwal crossed the 50-run mark and looked good to take his side home.

But for once, he mistimed one shot and was hold out in the deep in the 13th over to be the victim of Rahul Tewatia. With two new batsmen, Aiden Markram and Nicholas Pooran, in the middle, the Royals hoped of making a comeback and they also managed to make things interesting by bringing the equation down to 32 off last four overs.

Both the batsmen played maturely to bring the equation down to 8 runs from two overs. But then Mustafizur Rahman did well to leave four runs for Kartik Tyagi and then the youngster delivered his wide yorkers superbly to bowl five dots in the final over while picking two wickets as well to seal the win for the Royals by two runs.

Arshdeep Singh and Lomror – Talking Points of first innings

Earlier, Evin Lewis and Yashasvi Jaiswal put on a show for the Rajasthan Royals after they were put into bat first. The Caribbean batsman, making his debut for RR, smacked 36 off 21 balls taking on Ishan Porel in the powerplay. After he fell, Sanju Samson’s up and down season continued while Liam Livingstone’s promising innings was cut short by a flying Fabian Allen.

At the other end though Jaiswal was playing a matured innings. He measured his shots well rotating the strike and punishing bad balls. The southpaw deserved to get a half-century but closed his bat face a tad early in a bid to get there only for the leading edge to be caught by Harpreet Brar.

Then arrived Mahipal Lomror and the most baffling decision from KL Rahul to bowl Deepak Hooda in the 16th over. Lomror had already warmed himself up after hitting two sixes off Adil Rashid and Hooda bowling only played into his hands. The left-handed slammed 24 runs in the over to keep the Royals going towards 200.

But they lost their six wickets for just 19 runs and that halted their progress. Eventually, the Royals finished on 185 in their 20 overs and it dramatically proved enough in the end thanks to Tyagi.

Here’s how Twitter reacted: