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Mayank Kumar ∙ 15 Oct 2020

IPL 2020 | RCB vs KXIP: Hits and Flops as Kings XI finally break their losing streak

The Kings XI Punjab finally broke the shackles after a string of losses in the ongoing season but not before squandering all the good start and momentum and taking it to the last ball of the game. Chris Gayle took time at the start of the innings in his first match of the Indian Premier League 2020 but found his rhythm and guided the team almost to the finishing line while KL Rahul batted in his usual way of anchoring the chase. While the game was highlighted by the Universe Boss's return to the tournament, there were several strategic brain-fade moments that were difficult to endure. On that note, here is our list of the best and worst performances of the last game. Hits Chris Gayle The Kings XI management ignored Chris Gayle’s prowess in the initial stages of the 13th Indian Premier League. There was quite a buzz before his IPL 2020 debut and he made his bat talk to justify all of the buzz and traction he was getting. He was helped by the opening pair of KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal who had set up the chase brilliantly with the required rate in control. Gayle took time to settle down and at one time was batting at just three runs from 11 balls but by the time the RCB would have realised, he had taken off to a 36-ball-50. KXIP have found major issues with their batsmen not seeing through the innings in run chases, and with Gayle on board against RCB, that pivotal issue seemed to have disappeared. Chirs Gayle is a veteran of T20 cricket and the KXIP need him to fire but with a different role at the number three. The team can’t afford to separate a successful partnership of KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal and hence it is imperative for Gayle to remodel his game for the number three position. He did justice to the role assigned to him and both Anil Kumble and KL Rahul would hope that the streak will continue. Mayank Agarwal Mayank Agarwal started the tournament with a mission to make this season his own and he has been at it so far. The right-hander missed out on a well-deserving fifty trying to hit Yuzvendra Chahal for consecutive sixes in the 8th over but it was his innings that set up the scoring rate while KL Rahul anchored the innings. Mayank did not get too many balls to face in the first three overs but when Kohli tossed the ball to Yuzvendra Chahal in search of an early breakthrough looking at the prolific record of these two batsmen in the partnership, Agarwal’s eyes lit up and he plummeted Chahal for six and two boundaries to get going. A couple of sixes off Chahal and Udana followed in the next few overs and by the time he was bowled by Chahal in an attempt to slog sweep the leg spinner across the line, he had made sure the Kings XI were batting well enough to keep the required run rate well under control (less than 8 runs per over). Murugan Ashwin Murugan Ashwin started brilliantly just after the end of the mandatory power play and was quick to find the suitable length for the Sharjah which is now showing a tendency of assisting spinners. He drew an outside edge off Aaron Finch's bat on his second ball but the edge flew between KL Rahul and Chris Gaylestanding at wide slip. An unbothered Ashwin produced another peach of delivery on the following ball that caught Finch rooted to the crease and searching for the ball that pitched on the leg stump and spun just enough to beat his outside edge and castle him. He was tough to get away for the RCB batsmen, in particular Washington Sundar who was brought in before AB de Villiers especially to thwart the leg-spinning challenge. A googly that pitched on the off-stump of the left-handed Sundar enticed him to go for the slog sweep and the top edge was safely pouched by Chris Jordan at the long-on boundary. Ashwin finished with a superb figure of 23/2 off his four overs which is nothing short of exemplary in Sharjah. Flops KL Rahul It’s very unusual to place a batman who steadied the ship and finished not out at 49-ball-61 in the list of flops of the game but the kind of leadership KL Rahul showed on the field was tame. The team was in need of mere 7-8 runs per over when Gayle completed his fifty and considering he batted through the innings he should have ensured that the team does not walk the same path they did in the last match against the Kolkata Knight Riders. KL Rahul has been prolific with the bat in the tournament so far but not the same can be said about him in terms of ideas and vision about the team. He has looked to be carrying the baggage of discipline and class who can’t afford to get out whatever the situation the team finds itself in. When asked, a defiant Rahul termed the statistics about strike rate overrated and that he will take a 120 strike rate any day if that wins matches for his team. Well that has not quite worked out yet, has it? Yes, in matches where the wickets keep falling around him this could have come to his rescue but against the RCB, where there were 9 wickets in hand, what was the logic of dealing in singles throughout the innings? Commentators calling the game in the end overs, too, pointed out that the match should not have reached the stage it ultimately reached and that KL Rahul should have taken initiative when the Kings XI had proven batsmen sitting in the dugout. Virat Kohli Like KL Rahul, Virat Kohli, too, had a good with the bat but a terrible day as the captain of the side. Winning and losing a game is part and parcel of the game but to think that batsmen like Washington Sundar and Shivam Dube can handle leg spinners better than AB de Villiers and more so in the T20 format is nothing short of bizarre. When the second wicket fell in Aaron Finch in the seventh over, the world was waiting for AB de Villiers to walk out in the middle and the kind of touch he had shown in the last game against the KKR on the very pitch with a 33-ball-73, the expectations of him were not out of place. Virat Kohli and Mike Hesson had a different plan in the mind and ultimately what everyone feared turned out to be true and the experiments to send both Sundar and Dube ahead of de Villiers failed miserably and the RCB fell short of par scorer even after a blitzkrieg from Chris Morris in the last over. Sharjah, which at the start of the IPL 2020 was appearing as a deathbed for the spinners is turning out to be a heaven for slow bowlers in the last couple of games. Spinners have got purchase from the pitch in the back to back matches and the teams will now have to change their outlook about Sharjah where the par score has reduced considerably in the last two games. This Kings XI have kept their hopes alive and also avoided the danger of walking into the must-win territory However, KL Rahul needs to sit down with Anil Kumble and finalise the role of the player in order to make himself free from the burden of doing all the roles by himself.

Murugan Ashwin

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IPL 2020 | RCB vs KXIP: Hits and Flops as Kings XI finally break their losing streak