Two-time champion team Kolkata Knight Riders performed another bang performance against RCB. The team captained by Nitish Rana registered its first win in the 16th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL-2023). In the match played at the prestigious Eden Gardens ground on Thursday evening, the Kolkata team defeated Royal Challengers Bangalore by a huge margin of 81 runs. Captain Faf du Plessis also discussed the reasons for the defeat of the Bangalore team.
For KKR, wicket-keeper batsman Rahmanullah Gurbaj (57) and Shardul Thakur (68) did wonders with the bat. After this, leg-spinner Varun Chakraborty and young Suyash Sharma performed well with the ball and took 7 wickets. Shardul was chosen as the player of the match. In his innings, the KKR team scored a big score of 204 runs after losing 5 wickets for 89 runs. Shardul scored 68 runs in 29 balls, hitting 9 fours and 3 sixes in his innings. Then Varun took 4 wickets for 15 runs in 3.4 overs. Suyash took 3 wickets for 30 runs. Sunil Narine took 2 wickets for 16 runs.
RCB captain Faf du Plessis blamed a KKR player for his defeat. He praised not one but 3-3 players. Faf du Plessis said, ‘We bowled well at the match’s beginning. The score was probably 100/5 around 13 overs. We gave away 20-25 extra runs on such a wicket; Shardul Thakur played unbelievably well. He took the match away from us.”
Faf du Plessis said, ‘KKR’s leg-spinners bowled brilliantly. They dominated us; Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy put pressure on us well. This is the nature of leg spinners or mystery spinners. Still a good wicket, our batting was very average, and when we lose games like this, we still need to make sure we get close to the target. The game of T20 cricket moves very fast, and we will try to learn our lessons; just make sure that we change the things we work on.”
