KKR vs RR, What caught our eye: Sunil Narine gets better of Ashwin, Raghuvanshi flicks stylishly and Ashwin bowls seam-up

Luck plays a part

A few mishits turned the tide as Jos Buttler got a few away off Varun Chakravarthy with the asking rate touching 16 runs an over. The ball was sticking in the pitch and the spinners were hard to get away. Conventional shots were not reaping dividends, and it was a leading edge to the boundary that started the turnaround. A reverse-pull and  a sweep were followed by another thick edge as 17 came off the 15th over. Still a lot needed to be done, and against the great Knight Riders Andre Russell and Sunil Narine. Rovman Powell took on his  fellow Caribbean superstars, in Buttler’s company. The two bowlers went for 33 in the next two overs, and though Powell departed with virtually no batting ability left, Buttler took the team home. He hogged the strike for the last three overs – Trent Boult faced one ball and Avesh Khan none – as Mitchell Starc, Harshit Rana and Chakravarthy went for 18, 19 and 9 runs to seal the highest successful chase in IPL history.

Narine wins the spinners’ bout

R Ashwin had laid the snare against Sunil Narine. He stationed a point and backward point inside the ring, a long-off and sweeper at cover. He would then toss the ball wide on off-side, tempting the Trinidadian, who has a tendency to throw his hands at the ball, with bat far from the body. Narine did exactly that, only that he sweet-spotted the ball so sweetly that it bisected the long-off and sweeper. Ashwin didn’t surrender. The next ball was similar, a touch fuller, slower and not as wide. The response was the same. But this time, Narine lost his shape. But there still was adequate impetus and fortune to pierce the space between point and backward point whose dive ended futilely. It’s the secret of Narine, he trusts his percentage strokes, not bothering about the outcome. A visibly irritated Ashwin flung the next ball flat, which Narine tried to reverse-sweep but failed to connect.

Another Last Over Thriller 🤩

A Jos Buttler special guides @rajasthanroyals over the line and further extends their lead at the 🔝 🙌 🙌

Scorecard ▶️ https://t.co/13s3GZLlAZ #TATAIPL | #KKRvRR pic.twitter.com/d3FECR81X1

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) April 16, 2024

Two classy strikes from Raghuvanshi 

The young Indian batsman Angkrish Suryavanshi, is getting the raves and he presented two more moments to savour from the ongoing game. Both came against Yuzvendra Chahal, but both were contrasting. In the 7th over, Chahal had ripped a leg break on a length around middle stump and the tall Raghuvanshi stretched forward and almost a la VVS Laxman wristed it to wide long-on. It didn’t look as if there was much power behind it, but the ball travelled far too quickly for Riyan Parag in the deep. Next moment came in Chahal’s next over and this time he flicked a quickish delivery on the off stump line and Raghuvanshi played it very late, almost off the stumps, and forcefully at that with a deft late cut/chop through backward point boundary. He would fall to the fast bowler Kuldeep Sen, slashing a short ball outside off to third man.

Right-arm, inswing of Ash

The penultimate ball of his last over, R Ashwin, at his wits’ end having toiled fruitlessly, slipped in a seam-up ball. It would have made any good seamer proud. The seam was vertical and bolt upright, from the master of square-seam, and swung in the air and seamed in sharply after landing a trifle wide outside the off-stump on hard length. A bemused Andre Russell coiled to late cut, but the ball hurried him and cramped him for room. All he managed was a bottom edge that hit his pad and fell under the keeper’s boot. The next ball was similar, an inswinger that Russell blocked, as though it were a Mohammed Shami nip-backer.

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Parag finds a way

For the first couple of balls of Riyan Parag’s innings, he tried to move towards the leg-side and flay at the ball. Maybe, he was finding the pace generated by Harshit Rana a bit disconcerting. It was not in keeping with the version of him one has been accustomed to seeing in this IPL, when Parag has shown impeccable class, maturity and hitting power to be one of the mainstays of the Rajasthan Royals middle order. But it didn’t take him long to revert to the methods that have brought him so much success in the competition. After the first two shots betrayed anxiety with the head and feet all over the place, the youngster soon got himself together and focused on staying still, watching the ball, and trusting his talent and technique to do the rest. His first boundary came via a leading edge past short third, but he was soon finding the middle of the bat. Vaibhav Arora’s pace was used to deflect one to long leg for four before an extraordinary pick-up shot over deep midwicket left a few jaws on the floor. On the last ball of the over, a picture perfect cover-drive provided some tough competition. When Rana came on, he was given the same treatment as Parag first whipped him over the deep square-leg boundary, and then a short and wide one was guided to the point boundary. But chasing a tall total allows no chance to take a breath. Parag had to keep going, and an ungainly heave brought about his downfall on 34 off 14, but not before providing some more evidence of what he is capable of.

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