Kolkata Knight Riders skipper Shreyas Iyer put up a brave fight for his team against Rajasthan Royals to keep them in the hunt till the last over of Match No. 30 in IPL 2022 at the Brabourne Stadium on Monday (April 18). Iyer smashed a brilliant 85 off 51 balls as KKR almost managed to chase down a daunting 218-run target but fell seven runs short.
However, Iyer ended up as the first victim of Royals leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal’s brilliant hat-trick in the 17th over of the chase. After his dismissal, the KKR skipper was seen complaining about something to the head coach Brendon McCullum who was sitting in the dugout.
Iyer had his bat and helmet in the hands and was talking to McCullum about some action on the field. Understandably, the KKR coach too didn’t have anything to say at that point.
Check video of Shreyas Iyer’s argument with Brendon McCullum here…
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After facing a defeat in a thrilling encounter, KKR captain Iyer praised his rival batter Jos Buttler for his second ton of IPL 2022. “I think from the start we got, we really were going well according to the run-rate. Finchy was good but once he was out, we slowed down a bit. We lacked a bit over there, but it`s a part of the game. Unfortunately, we couldn’t click. My plan was to bat through the end, the opposite batsman had to take it on from ball one. The matchup Rana had was with Chahal. He did not time that and it happens,” said Shreyas in a post-match presentation.
“He (Buttler) started a bit slow and after that, he just went off. The way he manoeuvres the ball, he is a classy batsman. Kudos to the way he batted. If we had got him out early, the scoreboard would’ve looked very different. Dew didn’t play a big role tonight. Amazing wicket to bat on. Unfortunately, Brabourne hasn’t been great for us,” he added.
The match was a cliff-hanger where the pendulum tilted from one team to another as Kolkata Knight Riders were sailing through at one stage reaching the triple-figure mark in just 8.3 overs with Shreyas Iyer and Aaron Finch batting at the crease. But wickets from Chahal, Ashwin and Prasidh Krishna brought Sanju Samson led Rajasthan Royals back in the game.
“Hopefully we will come back hard in the coming games. There is a lot of pressure and I love pressure. I just wanted to set an example, doesn’t matter whatever score they get. If they can get it, I can get it as well. That’s how I was thinking,” said the KKR skipper.
(with ANI inputs)
