Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer, Shivam Mavi and Pat Cummins were his victims, the last three falling in a row. But with Royals virtually staring down the barrel, Chahal turned the match with four wickets in that 17th over. More so when a settled batsman like Iyer (Shreyas) was blazing away. When the equation was 40 runs, four overs and six wickets… the batting side fancies its chances. We played a good game of cricket but we made a couple of silly mistakes.” We can’t allow good players like Chahal to dictate the game when the pressure was on.
“We tried to keep Cummins for the pacers. “A couple of silly mistakes and just not handling pressure as well as we should have cost us the game,” confessed McCullum. It was not deft work by a side that has some great minds of the game in its ranks.
They tried to shield Pat Cummins, who can be dangerous with the bat, from Chahal and tinkered with the batting order. Chasing 218, three of their batsmen got out facing only one ball and another exited even before facing a delivery. It almost ended in a loss for the Royals but KKR were not great on tactics. Sanju Samson played with the minds of the opponents to ensure Jos Buttler’s century and Yuzvendra Chahal’s five-fer, including a game-changing hattrick, did not end up in a losing cause. With calmer heads they could, perhaps, have avoided the ignominy of losing all their three games at the Brabourne Stadium, but jangled nerves in a high-pressure situation got the better of the Shreyas Iyer’s side, who were out-psyched by a rather unruffled Rajasthan Royals skipper. That even the coolest of professional minds can waver in the heat of competition was established when Kolkata Knight Riders managed to stray away and slump to a mind-bending seven-run defeat against Rajasthan Royals. Over 420 runs, a century, two half centuries, a century stand, a five-wicket haul and a hat-trick… it was a testament to the evolution of the IPL over time, as Brendon McCullum put it later, but in the end it all boiled down to a battle of cognitive attrition.
Buttler set the tempo with a fiery ton and Chahal swept KKR off with a sensational fifer.
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