IPL 2021 | MI vs KKR - Hits & Flops as KKR fail to break Mumbai juju
Water is wet, winter is cold, Kolkata Knight Riders lose to Mumbai Indians. It has gotten to a point where it just seems ridiculous that a professional cricket team has lost 10 out of its last 11 matches against another professional team in the Indian Premier League. After winning a near-perfect game against the Sunrisers Hyderabad in their opening encounter, the Eoin Morgan-led KKR found themselves on the wrong side of things on Tuesday, 13 April, losing a seemingly easy chase by 10 runs. The Mumbai juju is not a new phenomenon in the IPL for the Shahrukh Khan owned side. In the history of the competition, the two teams have met a total of 28 times, and the results go in favour of MI by a staggering margin of 22:6. Tonight, on the other hand, it’s not as much the loss that hurts the Knight Riders, rather it’s the way they lost after being in control of the proceedings for the most part of the game. In the duration of 40 overs out in the middle, they more or less had the game in their hand for the first 35 overs. After a stupendous bowling performance in the first innings where they picked up all 10 wickets, KKR restricted MI to a modest total of 152 runs. Returning to chase that down, Kolkata seemed to be cruising till the 14th over, having scored 113 runs for the loss of three wickets. It has to be noted right now that Kolkata lost their first wicket (Shubman Gill) in the ninth over for 72 runs, and in the lead up to the 14th they had lost Rahul Tripathi and Eoin Morgan owing to reckless shots. With things having gone a bit tentative out there, KKR needed someone to hold fort and see them through on a track that had started assisting spin bowling. And then, all hell broke loose. In an absolute brain fade moment, a set Nitish Rana decided to step out against a Rahul Chahar googly. He took a couple of strides forward, got beaten by the variation and then just stood there. It had all the makings of an awful dismissal. With Rana gone, KKR found themselves in a spot of bother, but at least they had the run rate in check. Needing 31 off the last 30 balls with six wickets in hand should be a cakewalk for any side out there, but it was not to be. All KKR big hitters in Andre Russell, Dinesh Karthik, Shakib Al Hasan found it extremely difficult to hit from the word go and in the last five overs managed to score just a meagre 20 runs. Only a solitary boundary was scored off the last five overs, which came against a Jasprit Bumrah free hit. On that note, here are the Hits & Flops of the game as MI crawled their way back into the game to hand a demoralising defeat to the Knight Riders. Hits #1 Pat Cummins Andre Russell might have taken a fifer on the night, but the initial charge was led by Pat Cummins. Much ridiculed for his price tag last year, Cummins bowled his heart out on a sluggish Chennai deck tonight. After getting hit for a massive, ‘out of the park’ kind of a six in his second over, Cummins came back strongly to put the Mumbai batsmen on the backfoot. He took charge in the middle overs and bowled hard lengths to everyone, making it incredibly difficult by the pace and bounce he extracted in a pitch that seemingly assisted spinners. He took the dangerous Ishan Kishan out of the equation by trapping him off a pull-shot to fine leg and then nagged Rohit Sharma into playing a drive away from his body, a shot that he chopped on. Sharma’s wicket was crucial and broke the back of the Mumbai line-up. At that point, Sharma had just started finding his range after the initial struggle, but Cummins thwarted him from getting a big one and made sure that KKR were on top of the run flow at all times. Both Hardik Pandya and Kieron Pollard, the wreckers in chief in the lower-middle order for MI, found it impossible to hit Cummins and had to be satisfied with just taking eight runs from his final two overs. #2 Suryakumar Yadav If there was one batsman who did not give a damn about the pitch, it was Suryakumar Yadav. Eoin Morgan’s plan of action on the day was to starve the MI top order off pace and keep bowling tight lines. While Sharma and Quinton de Kock visibly looked uncomfortable, Yadav looked unperturbed. He displayed his full range of strokes in his usual gum-chewing-swagger and kept depositing bowlers throughout the park. Realising that he was not going to be given much pace, he kept finding the gaps with punches and checked drives and kept the scoreboard ticking. He punished Prasidh Krishna for inconsistent lines and lengths and took 16 off his first over. Yadav hit one of Pat Cummins’ attempted yorkers so hard that it went onto the roof of the square leg boundary. After scoring a stroke-filled 56 off 36 balls, SKY departed trying to accelerate the scoreboard against Shakib Al Hasan. The lack of pace off Shakib’s bowling beat SKY in the air and he looped up a chance to long-on. #3 Rahul Chahar When it looked like Mumbai were down and out in the competition by the end of the 8th over, Rahul Chahar decided that it was enough. Not necessarily known to turn the ball a lot off the surface, Chahar’s spell between the 9th and 15th over yielded four wickets, all of which were of course the foxy leg spinner’s. From 62/0 KKR owing to Chahar’s grip and turn off the surface were suddenly reduced to 122/4. He cleaned up all top four batsmen in Kolkata’s line-up and reminded the selectors as to why he could turn out to be the X-factor in the upcoming T20 World Cup scheduled to be hosted in India. There was a time in his spell, where it became so tentative that Rohit Sharma brought in a slip and stationed himself at silly point hunting for wickets. Chahal’s wicket of Nitish Rana turned out to be crucial in the second innings, and from there KKR had no clue what they were doing down in the middle. Flops #1 Andre Russell This is a controversial call. After all, Andre Russell did take a five-wicket haul that was completed in just 12 legal deliveries, a record, in the Indian Premier League. But having said that, there is no excuse for a lower order power hitter to score 9 off 15 deliveries and wasting away chances of doubles at a time when boundaries were incredibly difficult to come by. Now mind you, out of those nine runs, there was one boundary scored off Jasprit Bumrah’s freehit, which essentially makes his scorecard for a worse reading. An unfit Russell coming out in the middle meant that there were at least three chances were singles were not converted into doubles. But that has been fine over the years with the KKR fans, because, when Muscle Russell finds his range, Muscle Russell really finds his range. But it was not to be. He got stuck in the crease and ate up balls essentially meaning KKR only hit a single boundary in the last five overs. Needing 15 from the last 6, an out of sorts Russell holed it back straight to the bowler sinking his and KKR’s ship along with him. Andre Russell’s fitness is going to be a big talking point in the next two months, like it mostly is. KKR would really hope that tonight’s batting performance from the Jamaican was just an aberration and that he would come through in the batting department in the coming days. #2 Shakib Al Hasan Shakib Al Hasan is a veteran. Picked in the mini auctions this year for the sum of Rs 3.20 crores, KKR would have hoped that he uses his experience and steers off the team when they are in precarious situations. Well, easier said than done. Well, no actually, it could easily have been done if Shakib did not decide to play catching practice with the Mumbai fielders. Needing 31 off 30, Shakib decided that it was the right time to go for a desperate release shot when the length was not there at all. His slog sweep landed several yards inside the boundary line and made things very tense for the rest of the guys to come. Having mastered himself in the role of playing second fiddle throughout his career, where he anchors teams through to the finish, Shakib’s choice was baffling. He would take a long hard look at himself tonight and tell himself that, you know what? That was not done. In the post-match press conference, Morgan admitted that the loss was a hard pill to swallow. “I think the perfect game is to be able to do both (aggressive as well as anchoring) and we've managed to do neither in the end. It works for us a majority of the time, but we need to be better.” The only bright side to this loss would be the fact that it has come very early in the tournament, and for a side of KKR’s calibre, one would argue that they can shake things up and bounce off. With the next assignment due on 18th April against the RCB, KKR have more than enough days to figure out patterns that have emerged in the MA Chidambaram Stadium. Till then...May God forgive KKR.
 "Somya Kapoor")
