A team which has been losing matches consistently will find it difficult turning the tide in the IPL. This has been the trend for years and the Kings XI Punjab find themselves struggling against the precedent.
Certainly, on occasions the bottom-ranked teams have done well in certain areas of the game, but seldom have they come out of the tourney with flying colours. Pitted against the Kolkata Knight Riders, the Kings had the odds stacked against them.
The Kings did everything right from the beginning of the match, at the Eden Gardens, on Saturday. They won the toss, promptly opted to bat first and scored 183 at the loss of five wickets. But at the end of it, KKR stole the match away from the Kings by one wicket.
After a very long time, Glenn Maxwell scored some runs for his team. Even some of the top-order batsmen got those important starts to compile a very competitive score. But it was to no avail, nothing worked after Kings’ bowlers were all over the place. In other words, their main bowlers conceded plenty of runs.
For the defending champions KKR, Andre Russell again played an outstanding innings and laid a solid foundation to chase in the middle overs. At the end of 10th over, KKR were only 74 for three and needed 110 runs to win the game with a required run-rate of around 11 runs per over.
But from the 13th over, both Russell and Yusuf Pathan took the attack to the opposition and batted with aggression. This partnership exerted tremendous pressure on the Kings and turned the game in favour of the home team.
Towards the end of the match, KKR did loose wickets at regular intervals, but never lost the focus to stay ahead of the Kings. They knew that the Kings were playing role of party poopers, it was more of a challenge to race to the top of the points table.
Incidentally, this was the Kings’ ninth loss from eleven matches. It’s unbelievable to think that they are the same set of players who had played last year’s IPL final against KKR.
It’s also unbelievable that their ace bowler and, perhaps the most feared fast bowler in world cricket, Mitchell Johnson, lost his reputation in this season.
