KKR have now made a complete U-turn from their impressive start to the season, and they have now lost two games in a row. What's worse is that they never looked like winning those games - they were pretty one-sided. On this occasion it was against the IPL's weakest team, Rajasthan Royals, that the batting order decided to fail again.
Faiz Fazal, Yusuf Pathan and Abhishek Jhunjhunwala spent some time in the middle for RR, while Naman Ojha and Adam Voges on either side of the innings gave them enough momentum to reach 168, still a sub-par total. The KKR bowlers were impressive for the most part, Dinda and Kartik in particular. Matthews got bashed again - he isn't as effective on flat pitches because he's too slow. And then KKR's batsman showed us that no total can be called sub-par when they're batting, they'll make it look tough. Brad Hodge may have a few runs under his belt, but in truth he hasn't seemed distinctly comfortable out there and he doesn't seem to be able to hit the big ones. Tiwary failed again, and Pujara failed to convert his good start.
The elephant in the room is, of course, Sourav Ganguly. He's trying to play himself in every match, and in the process he's hurting his team by failing to up the run-rate. What is resulted in today, is Owais Shah and Angelo Mathews coming in right at the end, when it was too late to be able to affect the outcome. Ganguly needs to bat either right at the top or further down below, and the latter just isn't going to happen - it's not good for his ego. No one touches Dada's ego (no hidden meanings).
Chris Gayle coming in next match should provide momentum aplenty, probably replacing Shah and opening with Hodge. Tiwary and Pujara in the middle-order to play their shots seems like a good foil to Ganguly's struggles. If KKR don't get some wins going, they'll be out of it pretty soon - don't want to leave B-Mac with too much to do.
4 comments:
I love watching KKR lose. It's not that I particularly dislike them, it's just hilarious how wrong they get it every time they lose. It's never even close. And of course, it's always fun to watch Ganguly's ego reined in a bit.
Haha yeah, that was me about 10 days ago - I just found their headless chicken approach so amusing! With the IPL blog battle I'm obligated to support them, but as soon as that's over it's ha-ha time again :P
I thought Hodge was poor today, just sort of pottered along when he needed to accelerate. And Ganguly isn't really cut out for this lark is he?! Gayle will add plenty of firepower, when is McCullum due to arrive? Poor old Owais Shah, I really wanted him to do well, but ever since that first game he hasn't quite looked right...
Yeah GreenJJ, that was the issue with the entire innings actually, they never looked like chasing! Ganguly is in for leadership and nothing else, that's been made pretty clear to us! Gayle is the most important import here, and B-mac will arrive when he's done playing Oz, so it'll be a while.
Shah needs more time in the middle, which he isn't getting.
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