Once Shashank Singh hit the winning runs, there were only the noises from the Punjab Kings camp that could be heard. The visitors had pulled off the biggest win in T20 cricket as they chased down a seemingly impossible target of 262 in the 19th over itself at the historic Eden Gardens.
In the first innings, Kolkata Knight Riders yet again got off to a blazing start as they completely thrashed the opposition, bringing a lot of happiness on the faces of home team fans in the city of joy. Sunil Narine moved to second spot in the Orange Cap race with his scintillating 71 runs from 32 balls, while Phil Salt was at this aggressive best scoring 75.
Just when it seemed that the game was more or less done, Punjab flipped the game over. Jonny Bairstow and Prabhsimran Singh decided to launch an attack of their own and ultimately took the fight to the home huddle. The England batter scored his 2nd ton of the cash-rich league as he found good support from Shashank Singh, once Prabhsimran left. Shashank, too, swatted the bowling counterparts to secure an epic triumph.
Here are the three changes KKR need to make ahead of their next game against Delhi Capitals:
3. Once fit Mitchell Starc has to return
It was a sad debut for Dushmanta Chameera as he was clobbered to all parts of the Eden Gardens. The right-arm pacer was drafted in place of Mitchell Starc who had injured his finger in the game versus RCB.
Once fit, the Australian seamer has to come back into the team. Although the speedster hasn’t had the best of the tournament so far, but the quality the Aussie left-armer has with the ball has proven itself time and again in the past. His ability to nail the toe-crushing yorkers, lethal bouncers and swinging deliveries was something the Knight Riders missed against the Kings.
2. Shreyas Iyer needs to be more proactive as captain
When the visitors were going all guns blazing, the Shreyas Iyer-led side team surrendered without a fight. This is where the seasoned captains come into play, and this is an area where the leader of KKR’s pack has to learn.
The KKR skipper put in the wrong bowling changes and did a huge blunder by picking Anukul Roy as an Impact Player. The left-arm spinner was hit for 36 runs from his 2 overs to effectively negate his presence on the field, in fact, adding injury to the assault faced in the second innings.
1. Draft in Suyash Sharma for Varun Chakravarthy
It seems that Varun Chakravarthy’s season is going from bad to worse. The out of favour leg-spinner bowled three overs and gave away 46 runs and didn’t pose any threat with the ball.
What is more surprising is the fact that despite the 32-year-old struggling for form, KKR are still persisting with him. The team needs to give young Suyash Sharma a chance, as the leg-spinner is a genuine wicket-taker and can also create pressure with the ball.
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