Kolkata: It’s staggering that in a match which witnessed 70 boundary hits, Lucknow Super Giants scraped through by just one boundary. Even more startling was how Mitchell Marsh’s strike rate of 168.75 ended almost as a footnote to Nicholas Pooran’s 36-ball 87 (SR 241.66).
To concede 16 wides in a T20 is criminal but LSG lived to tell the tale after Kolkata Knight Riders scuppered a scintillating buildup with some disjointed batting in the final overs. No bowler was spared on a day 472 runs were scored but for Varun Chakravarthy and Digvesh Rathi who bowled the chase-altering 18th over where KKR could only score seven. At a time when they needed at least two boundary hits per over, that break proved to be decisive.
Chasing 238 may seem daunting but for the longest t ime KKR looked well on top of the innings by staying ahead of the asking rate. Two consecutive reviews against Quinton de Kock underscored the high stakes involved but Sunil Narine more than compensated for his early departure, smashing 30 off 13 balls. Two of his top-edges flew over wide slip before Narine teed off with a six against Shardul Thakur where his bottom hand came off. Rahane didn’t waste much time either, getting into the act by carting Akash Deep for four consecutive boundaries across two overs.
The fifty run partnership between Rahane and Narine came up in 19 balls with the KKR captain accounting for 34 of those in 13 balls. And once KKR finished the Powerplay with 90/1—their second highest Powerplay score after 105/0 against RCB in 2017—LSG knew the chase was on. They responded well though. Second ball into his first over, Rathi took out Narine and put the brakes on KKR’s chase by conceding just six runs. Nine more off his second over and KKR were quickly looking starved of big hits. Still, so impactful was the start that KKR rode it to score 129/2 after 10 overs, needing 11 per over from that point.
Rahane was more than up to the task, getting to his fifty in just 26 balls, muscling Bishnoi over long-on for six, lapping Avesh Khan from wide outside off to deep fine leg for a boundary. And when Thakur bowled five wides in a row, LSG looked almost on the verge of cracking under pressure. Till, Rahane got out to a full toss, chipping it to extra cover, allowing LSG to slowly come back into the game.
Bishnoi conceded four runs in the 14th over, Avesh Khan seven in the 15th and suddenly KKR were staring at an asking rate of over 13. Venkatesh Iyer was dismissed, and in five balls Andre Russell as well, leaving Rinku Singh the unenviable task of pulling KKR through. He tried, but attempting to save both ends while engineering the big hits proved to be too onerous for him.
The same, however, can’t be said of Pooran. Coming in when LSG were being set up by Marsh, Pooran had already blitzed his way to a 16-ball 32 by the time 15 overs had been bowled. Which left him in an excellent position to attack and KKR bereft of ideas to stop the carnage.
Russell was introduced in desperation and he struck with the second ball but eventually paid a heavy price for it, leaking 32 runs in two overs, 30 of those coming off Pooran in six hits. Thirty six balls were all Pooran took to wreak that mayhem but effectively 15—seven boundaries and eight over-boundaries—of those hammered in the truth that KKR were woefully underprepared to take on LSG’s batting might.
Not often do you see Narine not completing his quota of four overs at a home game and even though KKR did test LSG till the last over, there’s no denying that the pitch hasn’t exactly been too kind to the defending champions. When asked about it, Rahane was non-committal: “Agar main abhi kuch bolunga, toh bawal ho jayega. (If I say something, there will be an uproar).” Pooran wasn’t complaining though. No one can plan for it but 55 runs off the last 20 balls of his innings was as close to a perfect finish as Pooran could have hoped for.