Image Credit- AP
The Kolkata Knight Riders gave the fans at Eden Gardens a Bengali New Year to remember on Sunday when they defeated the Lucknow Super Giants by eight wickets. This was made possible by Phil Salt and Mitchell Starc. With his season-best 3 for 28, Starc secured significant LSG wickets, and Salt spearheaded the chase with an undefeated 47-ball 89. KKR has started a run of five straight home games in spectacular form, as they currently sit second on the points table.
Because of the middle overs efforts of their spinners, KKR was also left chasing a manageable goal; they kept LSG at bay even though they had wickets in hand. Varun Chakravarthy claimed one for thirty, while Sunil Narine took one for seventeen in four. Their eight overs went for a total of just 5.88 apiece.
After the match, KL Rahul called the loss a “proper hammering” and attributed it primarily to Salt. Salt clipped rookie Shamar Joseph to short-fine leg, very immediately after being dismissed for a duck in KKR’s previous game in Chennai. Salt was lucky to be dropped by Yash Thakur, although he would have still been spared by Joseph’s front-foot no-ball.
Following that let-off, Salt hit a six down the ground to end the first over and kept going hard on the powerplay.That prevented Sunil Narine and Angkrish Raghuvanshi from falling cheaply and helped KKR stay on course. In the third over, he hit three consecutive boundaries off Krunal Pandya, which set up a 58-run powerplay.
In the seventh over on 31, Salt was dropped again at deep-square leg, which may have caused him to become cautious for a few overs. However, Salt gained momentum once more in the tenth over, which was bowled by Arshad Khan (who paid a heavy price for dropping him three overs earlier). In the ninth, Salt hit back-to-back fours to reach his fifty in twenty-six balls and raise KKR’s hundred inside ten overs.
After hitting Thakur for three fours in the fourteenth over and a huge six over midwicket off Mohsin in the fifteenth, Salt started to put the final touches on the innings. The KKR batting innings and the LSG bowling effort were summed up by his four-wicked blow in the sixteenth over off a half-tracker from Bishnoi.
Shreyas Iyer, on the other hand, overcame a sluggish start to go undefeated for the second time this season. He only used forceful shots when the target drew nearer. He and Salt had the greatest third-wicket stand for KKR in the IPL with their unbroken partnership of 120.