Sourav SinhaKKR finds a new route to lose against Mumbai Indians

14April

KKR finds a new route to lose against Mumbai Indians

Winning from hopeless situations is what differentiates a champion team from an average one and Mumbai Indians showed that yesterday in Chennai. It was the 5th match of IPL 2021 and Mumbai Indians kept their lopsided record against KKR intact. It’s one of the biggest mismatches in IPL history with Mumbai Indians winning 21 of the 27 matches that they had played previously against KKR. It became 22-6 after yesterday’s match. For 80% of the match, it was all KKR, with them needing 40 runs to win off 36 balls with 7 wickets in the hand. From there, things turned spectacularly and Mumbai Indians won the match by 10 runs.

When singles would have won them the match all their premier international players went for big hits and failed. Quite a spectacular turnaround by Mumbai Indians and it got their campaign back on track.

So what were the hits and misses from yesterday’s encounter?

The Hits:

Andre Russell looks like a pale shadow of 2019 but his fitness seems to have improved over the past 6 months. Russell’s bowling at the death has been spectacular this season with his inventive yorker-length deliveries outside the off-stump which he delivers from round the stumps. He ended up with a 5 wicket haul yesterday to help KKR bowl out Mumbai Indians for a below-par total of 152 runs.
Krunal Pandya is used very effectively by Rohit Sharma and yesterday he made a big difference in the field with both bat and ball. The 15 runs that he scored while batting turned out to be a game-changer though his main contribution was with the ball where he returned figures of 1/13 in 4 overs to squeeze the KKR middle order.
Surya Kumar Yadav these days is playing in a separate zone altogether. All batsmen struggled to time the ball yesterday other than him. The helicopter shot which he has perfected for himself looks so pretty and the amount of power he generates with a simple flick of the wrist shows the special talent that he possesses.
Rahul Chahar had a very ordinary match against RCB where he visibly struggled due to the dew. But yesterday there was no dew and immediately he looked a different bowler. There were no short balls bowled and he got enough turn from the surface to keep the pressure on the KKR batsmen. His match-winning performance of 4/27 would work wonders for his confidence for the rest of the tournament.
Right from the time last year when Nitish Rana started opening for KKR he had been hitting a half-century followed by golden ducks. Thankfully he broke that jinx yesterday when the first ball off Trent Boult was driven beautifully through the covers for a boundary. He was not in his usual belligerent self yesterday and as I told earlier no one other than Surya Kumar Yadav seemed to come to terms with the pace of the pitch. Nonetheless, he scored a half-century though it came at a losing cause for KKR.
The death overs of Bumrah and Boult were supposed to be challenging for KKR and that’s one of the reasons why the batsmen tried to target Chahar and Pandya. The last two overs with Russell and Dinesh Karthick in the crease with the asking rate of 9 runs per over should have been getable but there were no freebies on offer and both of them didn’t miss their length even once in the final two overs. The last 2 overs went for only 8 runs to bring about a great come-from-behind victory for Mumbai Indians.

The misses:

Doing things predicting the future is always fraught with danger. By default, Chennai is a difficult ground to chase because the pitch gets extremely slow as the match wears on so win toss and bat first should be the strategy. But considering dew, Eoin Morgan went with the option of chasing and failed because as it turned out there was no dew in the second half of the match and both Chahar and Krunal Pandya got significant purchase from the dry surface!
Shubhman Gill’s struggle continued unabated and his failure to convert good starts must be very disappointing for him. Is he the right choice for KKR to open with is getting highly debatable with each passing day!
The big middle order of Shakib, Morgan, DK, and Russell failed spectacularly and that should be highly frustrating for KKR. This is the set of 4 players who needs to perform consistently for the team to do well in the tournament. These 4 are the real enforcers in the team but as it is turning out it’s their local uncapped players who are giving them better returns with the bat.

What to look forward to?

I don’t see Mumbai Indians need to do any changes going forward. This XI is their strength and they play this team continuously which is the reason why they win consistently. The Mumbai juggernaut looks set to roll on and it would be interesting to see how Sunrisers Hyderabad and Delhi Capitals play against them because these are two teams that I think are the real challengers to Mumbai Indians this season.

For Kolkata Knight Riders it was a case of so near yet so far. I don’t expect any changes in the lineup, though, I would suggest a few changes in the batting order. It’s getting increasingly clear that Gill struggles to find the gap in the powerplays and he is not comfortable going over the top consistently hence do a radical change and make Russell open the batting and give him the license to go all out in the first 6 overs. Who knows, this change might bring the old Russell back. Secondly, in spin-friendly conditions, push DK or Shakib to number 3.

I still believe that KKR has the team to reach the playoffs because their bowling is looking good and it’s the bowling that wins you championships. They will hope that Morgan will get his form back because once he is back in form, the KKR middle order will be much better than what we are currently experiencing.