KKR thrash SRH on two-paced Eden pitch

Kolkata: So frenzied has been the conjecture over when the Eden Gardens pitch will eventually start aiding spinners that its two-paced nature was almost forgotten. Till it reared up in a match where some of the best T20 hitters of the game were lined up against each other.

Rinku Singh struggled, Travis Head couldn’t judge it, and even Abhishek Sharma wasn’t connecting properly. Venkatesh Iyer said he had seen nothing like it at the Eden in the last two years.

Yet in keeping with the fad of going after the ball even when it isn’t there to be hit, Sunrisers Hyderabad crumbled spectacularly chasing 200, handing Kolkata Knight Riders a comfortable 80-run win here on Thursday.

Sunrisers know no other way to bat. Which actually played into KKR’s hands as the match turned one-sided once it was clear Sunrisers Hyderabad hadn’t got a hang of the track’s spongy bounce.

Looking to flay Vaibhav Arora over mid-off, Head didn’t get enough bat behind the ball. Sharma was half a second early into his attempted hoick off Harshit Rana, ending up gifting an outside edge that almost ballooned to Iyer at slip.

Now Ishan Kishan, itching to find the gap. He kept pushing, poking, prodding till Arora angled the ball across him, allowing Kishan to free his arms. The ball connected alright, but waiting at extra cover was Ajinkya Rahane who lunged to his left to snap up the catch.

Their chase desperately needed an anchor in Nitish Kumar Reddy but once he chipped Andre Russell to Sunil Narine at long-on, Sunrisers were tottering.

Heinrich Klaasen thrilled a bit, hitting Narine for a couple of sixes but Arora deployed the short ball that came to him slower than expected. Top-edged and caught at square-leg, Klaasen’s dismissal was on expected lines, rounding off a day where prudent batting shone for a change.

At the heart of it was a stabilising 81-run stand between Rahane and Raghuvanshi. Without Iyer’s 29-ball 60 and Rinku’s 17-ball 32 though, this win wouldn’t have been possible.

Four sixes unshackled KKR’s Powerplay run rate after a sedate start that almost threatened to go the Mumbai way after Quinton de Kock and Sunil Narine were dismissed in the space of five deliveries.

This time though, Rahane was looking to play himself in. Having done that adequately, he finally picked up a short of a good length delivery from Cummins to send it clear of the square-leg boundary. Against Shami, Rahane used his pace to lap it over backward square-leg for a six. Targeting Simarjeet Singh was on the cards too, with both Rahane and Raghuvanshi hammering sixes off him in his opening over.

KKR could have accelerated at this point. But Zeeshan Ansari’s wily leg breaks essentially starved them of any hittable length, forcing Raghuvanshi to resort to reverse sweeps. Rahane tried the same and was caught behind but quite surprisingly, Ansari wasn’t given a fourth over despite conceding just 25 in the first three.

Equally puzzling was the idea of giving Kamindu Mendis just one over where the off spinner not only got rid of Raghuvanshi but also gave away just four runs.

From Cummins’ perspective, relying on Mohammed Shami, Harshal Patel and himself to bowl the rest of the overs was an understandable strategy. But giving Simarjeet all four overs—he conceded 47—at the expense of Ansari or Mendis seemed rash.

Still, the run rate seemed under control with KKR reaching 122/4 after 15 overs after Patel made hitting through the line almost impossible by bowling wide of the crease and mixing up the length and pace of his deliveries.

After the strategic timeout though, KKR didn’t hold back. Shami was carted for two boundaries, Patel for three before Simarjeet leaked a couple of fours and a six by Rinku. Cummins came back for the penultimate over and was hammered for 21 runs. Patel went for 13 in the final over, meaning KKR had garnered 78 in the last five overs to turn the match on its head.