Kolkata Knight Riders captain Ajinkya Rahane, who has played all his cricket in Mumbai, knows the Wankhede Stadium at the back of his hand. When they were bundled out for a paltry score of 116 runs against Mumbai Indians at the same venue on Monday, Rahane knew it was a very below-par score.
Hardik Pandya decided to bowl first and KKR lost both of their openers – Sunil Narine and Quinton de Kock – in the first seven balls. While Narine was bamboozled with a perfect outswinger from Trent Boult when the batter showed his stumps, de Kock was dismissed by Deepak Chahar.
Debutant Ashwani Kumar was handed the ball in the fourth over and the left-arm seamer struck on his first ball to remove Ajinkya Rahane. The 23-year-old then accounted for Rinku Singh, Manish Pandey (impact player), and Andre Russell, returning with impressive figures of 4-24 in the three overs he bowled.
Kumar made a new record, registering the best bowling figures by an Indian bowler on debut, and also became the first Indian bowler to take four wickets on debut.
On the other hand, MI chased down the target with eight wickets and 43 balls to spare after Ryan Rickelton scored an unbeaten 62.
Ajinkya Rahane said after the loss, “Collective batting failure. It was a good wicket to bat on as I mentioned in the toss. 180-190 would have been good on this wicket. It has a very good bounce. Sometimes you have to use the pace and bounce. We got to learn really fast from this game.”
He added, “Couldn’t do much with the ball. They tried their best. But not much runs on the board. We kept on losing wickets. Four wickets in the powerplay. It was difficult to consolidate and get that total on the board. You need that partnership going. You need one batsman to stay till the end.”
Kolkata Knight Riders will next take on Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata on Thursday.
