NEW DELHI: A blistering fifty from
Venkatesh Iyer
proved to be the driving force behind Kolkata Knight Riders‘ emphatic seven-wicket triumph over
Royal Challengers Bengaluru
in their IPL encounter on Friday.
Venkatesh’s innings of 50 runs from 30 balls, including three fours and four sixes, combined with explosive performances from openers
Sunil Narine
(47 runs off 22 balls, including two fours and five sixes) and
Phil Salt
(30 runs off 20 balls, including two fours and two sixes), propelled the Knight Riders past the target of 183 runs set by RCB, anchored by
Virat Kohli
‘s unbeaten 83.
Unfazed by the slow pitch and the RCB bowlers, the KKR batsmen maintained their momentum, efficiently chasing down the target in just 16.5 overs with a clinical display of batting prowess.
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Expressing shock over the two-paced nature of pitch, RCB skipper Faf du Plessis said,” Strange one, first innings we thought that the wicket was very two-paced, you could see that when the guys bowled the cutters, back of a length, the guys really struggled. We thought it was a decent score knowing that it gets a little bit easier in the evening, there was a little bit of dew that came in. Looking at the way we batted in the first innings, even if you have someone in there, Virat was struggling to hit the ball just because there was lack of pace and the two-paceness.”
“(Could anything have done differently in the powerplay with the ball?) You can always know after the game, we can say perhaps try one or two things but the way the two of them (Narine and Slat) were striking the ball, some really good batting there, they put pressure on our bowlers. They hit strong cricket shots and pretty much took the game away.
“With Narine there, you can’t really go to spin, you want to use pace upfront. That’s also a really good match-up for Salt and the way he plays. They were excellent, really broke the game in the first six overs. We’ve tried the spinning options with Maxi, the finger-spinners seem be be effective here, but at night there wasn’t too much spin, With left-hand, right-hand combination, it’s one of those things, you can bowl a spinner. But as you saw when Venky was playing against the left-arm spinner, you feel like it’s an easy hit on a small boundary to hit with the spin. Ideally you want someone who can spin the ball both ways but with the set-up of our team tonight, we didn’t have that option.”
“(On Vyshak) Very good, he hasn’t had opportunities. We had a look in the first innings and we thought about bringing in Karn Sharma. But we felt someone who could bowl really good slower balls is probably the most difficult bowler to face on this pitch. Dre Russ probably bowled 80% of his balls cutters. We took some learnings from that and he was the best bowler of the evening,” Du Plessis concluded.