Quinton de Kock made his presence felt with a fine half-century but the KKR bowlers were quite impressive as well.
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The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) restricted defending champions Mumbai Indians (MI) to 155 on Thursday in an encounter of the 2021 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). There were a number of good individual batting performances for the men in blue but Eoin Morgan’s men did a fantastic job with the ball. At the end of the 20 overs, MI finished on 155-6. The Knight Riders will have to chase down 156 runs in 120 deliveries and they will be required to start at a strong run rate. They will be a confident bunch after recording a massive victory against the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in their previous game. A victory today would see the Knight Riders get into one of the playoff spots in the IPL 2021.
Morgan was the one who won the toss and he elected to field on the Abu Dhabi track. The MI openers did a fine job at the top of the innings as they built a strong partnership. Rohit Sharma and Quinton de Kock made a 78-run stand and it seemed like the history of MI dominating KKR would repeat again. However, the MI skipper was dismissed on 33 and things did threaten to go a little off track since then.
De Kock, however, did a fantastic job of holding the fort from one end. He made 55 runs off 42 deliveries. Suryakumar Yadav was a disappointment against his former side as he was dismissed on five. Ishan Kishan contributed 14 runs but it came at a slow pace. Kieron Pollard was the one who took the MI total to a respectable one with his cameo of 21 runs from 15 deliveries.
Morgan will be quite pleased with the performance his bowlers displayed on the day. The bowling was wicket-taking and economical. Pacers Lockie Ferguson and Prasidh Krishna were the most successful as they bagged a couple of wickets each. The Kiwi conceded 27 runs while Krishna was expensive with 43. Sunil Narine picked a wicket and he conceded only 20 runs in his four overs. There was no success for Varun Chakravarthy on the day but he bowled a tight spell of spin. He conceded only 22 runs in his four overs.
