New Delhi: Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad in a rain-affected IPL Eliminator by seven wickets via Duckworth Lewis System to enter the Qualifier 2 at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Thursday. The match that began at 8:00 pm (IST) on Wednesday finished close to 1:30 am (IST) Thursday thanks to a lengthy rain delay that kept both the teams waiting for close to 2.5 hours after SRH were restricted to 128/7.
The 35-year-old Kolkata skipper Gautam Gambhir said that he feels like a worn out 70-year-old after the stress and tension he went through during that game. The wait seemed to be never-ending and Gambhir never felt so helpless before.
"Till around 9.30 pm, I felt as if I owned half the planet and the ownership papers of the other half were being prepared. Then rain pelted my planet and washed away all my dreams. Almost," he wrote in his Hindustan Times column.
For Gambhir, who hates rain as much as he hates losing, the downpour on Thursday was too much to take. He even started contemplating about the damage caused by his team's losses against Kings XI Punjab and Mumbai Indians.
"I’d admit that my mind also took me back to the losses against Punjab and Mumbai. One win there and we’d have been in top two and wouldn’t have had to go through this torture. I don’t know how God decides his checks and balances for human beings but I was feeling really hard done by," he added.
Although KKR won the game, Gambhir admitted that he felt sorry for the Sunrisers team as he thought such losses are unfair and someone needs to come up with a plan B to deal with rain-affected matches.
KKR will now face Mumbai Indians in the second Qualifier at the same venue on Friday.
"Now Mumbai, our bogey team. Yeah, that is what my friends on Twitter are calling it. I am not thinking too much about that game at the moment except there is no forecast for rain on Friday." he concluded.
