Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine combining for figures of 8-0-40-4. Reduced to 111 for 8 at one stage, Capitals set KKR a 150-plus target thanks to an unlikely, unbeaten 26-ball 35 from Kuldeep Yadav. On Monday, the KKR bowlers, led by spinner Varun Chakravarthy, showed why the coach was not overtly worried as the hosts restricted a dangerous Delhi Capitals line-up to 153/9.
Varun Chakravarthy owns the joint-most wickets for KKR in IPL 2024 with Sunil Narine and Rana. The mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy has 11 wickets from nine matches at 27.09. Varun Chakravarthy’s economy rate in the season reads 9.03. Varun Chakravarthy, playing his 65th match, has raced to 73 wickets at an average of 26.00 in the IPL. The tally includes a four-wicket haul and a fifer. His economy rate in the cash-rich league reads 7.66.
Pitch and Toss
59 meters square boundary on one side, 71 meters on the other. Pitch is rock hard. Ball will come on beautifully. There will be runs tonight, bowlers have got their work cut out. This is the wicket that was played on against RR. Batters are going to enjoy out here again tonight.
Delhi Capitals won the toss and chose to bat . Skipper Rishabh Pant batting first made one change to the squad bringing in Prithvi Shaw for Mukesh Kumar. Kolkata Knight Riders skipper Shreyas Iyer bowling first bought in Vaibhav Arora and Mitchell Starc for Dushmanta Chameera and Anukul Roy.
Runs and wickets aplenty for DC in the Powerplay
Prithvi Shaw powered the visitors to a quick start with three boundaries in the opening over, but KKR were quick to strike back with a flurry of wickets. Shaw was caught edging the ball going down the leg, Jake Fraser-McGurk was caught at deep square leg, and Shai Hope was cleaned up by Vaibhav Arora. Breezy innings by Fraser-McGurk and Porel did help with the scoring rate though.
Jake Fraser-McGurk faced just seven balls on Monday night, and five of the seven were attempted yorkers, two of which ended up as full-tosses. The other two were banged into a hard length. The bulk of these balls were from Mitchell Starc, but Vaibhav Arora also stuck to the same plan with his two balls. This wasn’t two fast bowlers searching for swing from a fullish good length with the new ball. This was death bowling inside the powerplay, and as T20 batting leans more and more towards all-out attack, it’s likely we’ll see a lot more of it in the future.
On the day, Fraser-McGurk hit a four and a six and picked out deep square leg while looking to flick Starc for another six. By then, Capitals had already lost Prithvi Shaw, who had begun ominously with three fours off Starc, off the first three balls of the match. He had fallen in innocuous manner, strangling Arora down the leg side.
Arora took one more wicket, delivering a peach that straightened off the deck to hit the top of Shai Hope’s off stump. That ball suggested the ball would grip for the spinners too, and so it proved.
Varun Chakravarthy triple strike dents DC in middle overs
Before this match, Varun Chakravarthy had endured a difficult season, going at 9.72 while picking up eight wickets in eight games. While Narine had defied flat conditions, particularly in Kolkata, and prevented batters from accessing the boundaries, his spin partner had gone for plenty like every other bowler in KKR’s games.
Now, though, Varun Chakravarthy had a bit of help from the pitch, and he could have struck first ball had Harshit Rana – who had just dismissed a dangerous-looking Abhishek Porel in the previous over – not dropped a sitter off a Rishabh Pant miscue at short third. Pant, though, would go after Varun Chakravarthy again in his next over – the 11th of the Capitals innings – and miscue again, with Shreyas Iyer pouching him safely in the covers on this occasion.
Varun Chakravarthy was getting the ball to bite on the surface, and he quickly picked up two more wickets, of Tristan Stubbs and Kumar Kushagra – who came on as Impact Sub in a failed attempt to lengthen Capitals’ batting and stem the collapse. With Narine dismissing Axar Patel at the other end, Capitals were eight down inside the 15th over.
KKR continued to pick wickets and Harshit Rana struck off the fourth ball after the field restrictions were lifted. Pant attempted to steady DC through the middle overs, but their efforts to be on the offensive proved counter productive. Pant and Tristan Stubbs were undone by Varun Chakravarthy, while Axar Patel’s struggled stay was ended by Sunil Narine.
DC were forced to bring in their Impact Substitute (Kumar Kushagra) in the 13th over but that didn’t give them the desired result either, also getting caught behind off Varun Chakravarthy. With wickets falling at regular intervals, DC fell on the defensive.
Kuldeep Yadav fights till the end as DC reaches 153 for 9 at end of 20 overs
Kuldeep Yadav, batting at No 9, hung in there till the end and put on a 29-run stand in 24 balls with Rasikh Salam for the ninth wicket. En route he even pulled Mitchell Starc for a six. While the rest of the bowlers made merry, the Australian pacer continued to have a terrible run in the ongoing IPL.
The left-armer lost his line and followed up with a wide down the leg side which went for a four and the next delivery was pulled away for another boundary by Kuldeep. While it didn’t threaten to take the momentum away from KKR, valuable runs were added to DC’s total and helped them to a respectable score.
They managed to see out their 20, though, with Kuldeep getting them that far with a mixture of skill and luck. He hit two edged fours in his first four balls, and then hit a six off Starc that was very nearly a catch at deep backward square leg, and eventually finished with a control percentage of 41. They were important runs for Capitals, though, ensuring that they got to 150.
Phil Salt attack on the bowlers in the powerplay continued in this match too.
Phil Salt took little time to get going in the run-chase, smashing Lizaad Williams for 23 runs – the most expensive opening over this season. A no-ball by Williams helped in the first over and a dropped catch further aided in the second. Salt hogged much of the strike and continued the slam-bang approach which has got him much success in the recent games.
Narine was tested with a few short deliveries, but he managed to deal with those effectively. The half-century of the partnership was brought up in only 26 balls. In the last over of the powerplay, Salt hammered Khaleel Ahmed for a six down the ground to bring up his half-century in only 23 deliveries.
It was evident through the initial stages of KKR’s chase that the slower ball was gripping the surface and stopping on the batters, but it was also evident that Capitals’ quicks were offering frequent width to free the arms. With Salt and Narine in the form they were in, this was asking for trouble. And the trouble was compounded when Lizaad Williams, who went for 23 in the first over, dropped a straightforward chance off Khaleel Ahmed at the start of the second to reprieve Salt on 15.
The openers raced to 79 for 0 in the powerplay, with Salt, who had the bulk of the strike, reaching a 26-ball half-century in the sixth over.
DC strike but fail to seize momentum in the middle overs
Narine went after Axar’s first ball and perished, picking out deep midwicket in the seventh over while trying to hit with the turn, and Axar bowled Salt with a trademark, inward-angling skidder in the ninth. But KKR’s required rate was well below a run a ball, and it remained so even when Williams dismissed Rinku Singh with a good, hard-length ball in the 10th over.
Having gone through the powerplay without employing their successful spin duo of Axar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav, DC found success once they were brought into operation. Axar struck off the first ball of the seventh over, having Narine caught at deep mid wicket. In his next over, he cleaned up Salt with an arm delivery that the batter attempted to cut.
Rinku Singh, who was promoted to No. 3 couldn’t make much of an impact either and top-edged a pull to third man, getting dismissed in the 11th over for a run-a-ball 11. However, Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer controlled the chase from thereon.
Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer carries DC to 12 points in IPL 2024 with a 7 wicket win over DC
KKR had a long, in-form line of batters still to come, and in the end didn’t require Andre Russell, Angkrish Raghuvanshi or Ramandeep Singh to bat, as the two Iyer’s ticked off the remaining runs with little fuss beyond a mix-up in the 16th over when the match was already all but won.
Axar Patel removed both KKR openers when he came on, but it was too little, too late for Capitals, as Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer put on an unbroken 57 off 43 balls to end the match with 21 balls remaining.
Having just hosted a run-fest where 262 was chased down with eight balls to spare, Eden Gardens reverted to a former template familiar to fans of its home team, and Kolkata Knight Riders returned to winning ways and moved to second place on the IPL table with a confident, net-run-rate-boosting seven-wicket victory over Delhi Capitals. KKR now have 12 points from nine games, and a NRR of 1.096, the best of any team in the competition.
Presentations and Road Ahead
Rishabh Pant the Loosing skipper said :
“It was a good option to bat first. As a batting unit we didn’t bat well, 150 was below par with how things were going. But we learn from our mistakes, every day is not your day. The way we were going as a team was nice (winning 4 out of their last 5 games), but these games come along in T20s. I think anything around 180-210 would have been a good score, we didn’t give our bowlers enough runs to defend,”
Shreyas Iyer the Winning skipper said :
“[on if the pitch would play this way?] Not at all. Considering the last few matches, 200 was a par score. After the powerplay the pitch started helping the spinners, was tacky. We got a fair idea as to how it played and to tackle the tackiness. Narine still does not attend those meetings but Salt is always there, gives us his inputs and it’s pure bliss to see him coming up and doing all this. [if Narine attends meetings] He doesn’t,”
“I would not recommend him to come either. [on Chakravarthy] he has not been at his best the last few games. He has been assessing the wicket and has been giving us inputs. The way he turned up today was simply brilliant. [qualification] We have always been looking at it, even from the first game. The mindset is to qualify as early as possible. Just work on our work ethic and processes, don’t want to look at the points table,” he added.
Varun Chakravarthy Player of the Match for his 3 wickets said :
“It was holding a bit, as the game progressed in the 2nd innings, it was turning as well. [on him having a good match-up against Pant] Nothing like that, when the catch was dropped, I felt that was a better ball, and the one I got him, on other grounds, it would have gone for a six. Cricket has become a game of fine margins. I liked Tristan Stubbs’ wicket. I planned to bowl the leg spinner to him and it worked out,”
“[on conversations between him and Narine] Silence. When something doesn’t work for me, he is always there. In the last game after conceding so many runs, it was a tough pill to take but the whole team motivated us. Abhishek Nayar and even Shahrukh Khan came and spoke to me, definitely motivated us. [on the cheerleaders dancing] They should start dancing only for the sixers and not for the fours,” he added.
Easy chase for KKR. At the toss, Pant said the pitch was dry and that it would help the spinners. It sure did but DC did not help themselves as they made just 153 and the two spinners they had had not much to defend. Salt at the top ensured that the game was half-complete with his blistering assault.
That innings set KKR on the way and despite DC pulling things back with three wickets, the two Iyer’s took their side home. KKR could have won earlier but the Iyer’s batted sensibly after three losses and did not give DC any chance to come back into the game.
A totally different game this to the one that PBKS chased down 261 here last time but DC threw away their wickets and a bit more discipline shown could have given them more runs. KKR stay on 2nd with this win. KKR turned up on a pitch that aided their spinners while DC got it wrong maybe even from the toss. Was definitely not a bat-first pitch.