Kolkata: One point is better than nothing so Kolkata Knight Riders shouldn’t be too disappointed that their slim chance of chasing 201 against Punjab Kings were washed away by the nor’westers at the Eden Gardens on Saturday, in a season blighted by lean returns from the middle order.
Against KKR, Punjab Kings have the unique record of chasing down 261 and defending 111 in consecutive seasons, so no one could have predicted how the match would have gone had rain allowed at least five overs for the game to be completed. The match was called off just before 11pm with rain still not abating.
Going by the indications till then, only one team played to win, and that wasn’t KKR. To drop Ramandeep Singh in the light of his string of batting failures was justified but bringing in pacer Chetan Sakariya after switching Moeen Ali with Rovman Powell essentially meant KKR had tried to invest in batting muscle at the expense of spin-bowling edge. It failed spectacularly. Sakariya conceded 39 runs in three overs, Harshit Rana 27 in two overs. It prompted KKR to go to Andre Russell, who broke an important partnership that was threatening to take Punjab Kings to 240.
Between openers Priyansh Arya (69 – 35, 8×4, 4×6) and Prabhsmiran Singh (83 – 49b, 6×4, 6×6) PBKS again got the start they wanted, though it wasn’t going at the rate that is now their benchmark. Vaibhav Arora wasn’t on target and Arya skimmed two boundaries off him in the first over but Prabhsimran took time to get off the blocks. Two more fours against Arora and Arya was warming up to the form he is now dreaded for. The only difference was Arya wasn’t trying too hard for the sixes. Instead, he was working the gaps for boundaries. “The wicket is on the slower side,” said Arya at the innings break. “Ricky (Ponting, PBKS head coach) sir advised us to rotate the strike after the powerplay and take it deep.”
That is exactly what the openers did. The Powerplay- 56 runs in six overs – was sedate compared to how Punjab normally have been operating. But the middle overs – Punjab scored 105 runs at 11.67 per over – again provided the momentum to the innings. It didn’t start out on those lines though, with Sunil Narine conceding just four runs in his first over but Varun Chakravarthy was targeted by Arya, slogging him over deep midwicket for a huge six to set the tone for the innings.
Narine kept pressing but his third over was when Punjab Kings really turned around the innings. First, Arya skipped down the pitch and hit him over long-on for six. Prabhsimran deployed a switch hit to perfection before rubbing it in by clobbering a free hit from Narine over his head for half a dozen. Amid this, Arya had reached his fifty – 53 off 27 balls -before launching Narine into the orbit and deep into the stands for six. The 100-run stand was brought up in 11 overs, and though Arya was dismissed, the run rate stayed steady because Prabhsimran had decided to free his arms.
He picked Chakravarthy this time, hitting 4,6,4 before Arora finally dismissed him. Glenn Maxwell joined skipper Shreyas Iyer in the 15th over and PBKS suddenly had two new batters with a scintillating start waiting to be seized in the last five overs.
This is where KKR bounced back. Narine returned, and quietly conceded just six runs. Chakravarthy returned and Maxwell reverse swept him through backward point but the response couldn’t have been sweeter. Seam-up delivery but bowled flatter and quicker prompted Maxwell to make room and cut but it spun in to hit the top of off-stump. Seven runs from that over and the predicted score was in freefall now.
Why Marco Jansen was sent ahead of Nehal Wadhera or Shashank Singh probably puzzled everyone. He threw his bat, missed most, and then finally connected, only to be caught in the deep. From 161/2 in 15 overs to restricting Punjab Kings to 201/4 was possibly the only bright point in KKR’s bowling.