After registering a clinical win over Sunrisers Hyderabad in Qualifier 1, Kolkata Knight Riders skipper Shreyas Iyer lauded his bowlers for their outstanding performance, which was crucial in dismantling Hyderabad’s strong and destructive batting line-up.
The game was set up by the pace duo of Mitchell Starc and Vaibhav Arora in the Powerplay. Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine choked SRH in the middle overs, while Harshit Rana and Andre Russell took matters into their own hands at the back-end. It was truly an all-round bowling performance from the Knight Riders.
“I think the way every bowler stood up to this occasion, the way they came in and took wickets, that was imperative,” said Iyer in the post-match presentation. “The attitude and approach of all the bowlers was to take wickets and they did. When you have variety in the bowling line-up, it’s mesmerising. They have been true in terms of their work ethics, and hopefully we keep performing.”
Starc was on fire against SRH. The left-arm quick bowled a phenomenal opening spell, destroying the SRH top-order. Starc returned with figures of 3/34, the fourth-best bowling figures for KKR in the IPL playoffs.
“We needed to pick early wickets and get into their middle order,” noted Starc. “The way Head and Abhishek have been playing throughout the tournament, they like width and freeing their arms. We just tried to swing the ball and not provide them with width, bowling stump to stump and using the hard length. The spinners were effective, and the whole bowling department was great.”
Pat Cummins opted to bat first at a venue where chasing has generally been more favourable. From being bundled out for 159 to bowling poorly and conceding those runs inside 15 overs, nothing went SRH’s way during the night. On his part, Cummins didn’t hesitate to acknowledge where his team went wrong.
“You have those days in T20 cricket where things don’t quite work out,” said a dejected Cummins. “We weren’t where we wanted to be with the bat and obviously couldn’t do much with the ball. Felt that extra batting was important (picking the impact sub) on this wicket. Thought KKR bowled really well, there was a little bit in it early on and the surface got better.”