The Mumbai batsman Suryakumar Yadav really has some aggression! In front of the packed Eden Gardens on Wednesday, he was the prolific performer of the IPL opening match for the Kolkata Knight Riders.
Playing against his old teammates from the Mumbai Indians, the lanky batsman was ruthless. He sent the hapless Mumbai attack on a leather hunt. Yadav came to the crease when KKR lost two wickets and still needed 71 runs from 48 balls with an asking run-rate of 8.87. But he was relaxed.
It was the 13th over of the KKR innings and a length ball from Mumbai’s Vinay Kumar saw Yadav whacking it towards deep-square leg for a six. Those who captured that moment knew that Mumbai had already lost the momentum and would lose the plot very soon.
And expectedly, it inevitable happened. Not even one of the best bowlers in T20 cricket Lasith Malinga could stop the Mumbai based middle-order batsman from doing what he intended to do.
By the time KKR captain Gautam Gambhir got out, the game was still in favour of the home team, but someone still needed to be there at the crease to round up the match. Fortunately for the KKR, Yadav was in tearing hurry to finish the match and get back to his hotel room. And, he did it in style.
In total, this KKR batsman struck five huge sixes and a few of them went sailing into the crowd. Every six was greeted with a loud cheer. It appeared as if the Bengali New Year has already begun. The only boundary of his innings came towards the end of the match when he stroked the winning run for KKR. In short, Yadav was a complete entertainer.
Meanwhile, Mumbai captain Rohit Sharma kept his date with the Eden Gardens by making an unbeaten 98 off 65 balls. The Eden Gardens has become his happy hunting ground and he can’t do anything wrong here with the bat.
After a series of successful scores at this venue, the Indian opener carried the burden of Mumbai on his shoulders. Corey Anderson gave him some support to take the score to a very respectable position, but still Mumbai were short by 15 to 20 runs on a pitch that was conducive to stroke-making. But the kind of batting Yadav was doing during the KKR innings even a score of 200 would have fallen short for the visiting team.
