Punjab Kings’ skipper KL Rahul was left disheartened after his team was defeated by Kolkata Knight Riders by five wickets. Riding on skipper Eoin Morgan’s brilliant knock, KKR won their second game to a five-wicket win, bouncing back from registering four losses back-to-back.
KL Rahul, who continued with his poor form at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, could only manage to score 19 runs in 20 balls. KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal though started off defensively as they made less than 40 runs in 5 overs. On the other hand, KKR bowlers showed complete dominance and discipline in their lines and lengths to put Punjab Kings on the backfoot.
PBKS skipper KL Rahul could not get going as Cummins struck first blood to dismiss the Punjab Kings skipper for 19 runs off 20 deliveries was the first one to go. Soon after, KL Rahul’s dismissal, the batting line-up of Punjab Kings’ collapsed as the wickets started falling in quick successions.
Mayank Agarwal turned out to be the highest-scoring batsmen from Punjab Kings today with 31 runs. Chris Gayle (0), Deepak Hooda (1), and Moises Henriques (2) failed to get going with the bat and were dismissed cheaply. Nicholas Poora, who was bowled out by Varun Chakravarthy could only manage 19 runs off 19 balls. Punjab Kings’ could only score 123 runs.
As KKR came out to bat, KKR lost three wickets in three overs with Shubman Gill, Nitish Rana, and Sunil Narine scoring only nine runs between them. However, skipper Eoin Morgan and Rahul Tripathi stitched a 68-run stand to put the KKR’s innings back on track.
Tripathi scored out at 41 to long-on, followed by Andre Russell departing to a direct hit from Arshdeep Singh. Eoin Morgan was awarded the Man of the Match award for his unbeaten 47 runs. He stayed till the end with Dinesh Karthik to take the KKR home.
After the match, Punjab Kings‘ skipper KL Rahul made a heart-touching statement as he lamented not scoring an extra 20-30 runs. He added that soft dismissals cost them the game. He said:
“I really don’t know what to say, it was a poor performance from us. We should have adapted better on a new pitch, we could have applied a lot more with the bat and get that extra 20-30 runs. The wicket was a bit low and slow, but 120-130 was not enough. A few soft dismissals are that’s costing us the game. The pitch was a bit two-paced and stayed up and down as well. It was hard in the first six overs to understand the good shots to play on this pitch. It was expected that the pitch was difficult to assess at a new venue when you’re batting first, but we should have assessed and adapted quickly but we couldn’t do that. We have a few more games here and we hope to learn from our mistakes.”
