Kolkata Knight Riders captain Eoin Morgan rued a high order collapse after they misplaced a thriller to Chennai Super Kings on the Wankhede stadium in Mumbai. KKR had been 31 for five chasing 221 earlier than Andre Russell and Pat Cummins together with Dinesh Karthik produced a fightback to cut back the margin of loss to simply 18 runs.
“What a hell of a game of cricket. Certainly from the position we were in after our powerplay, we probably didn’t think we’d get as close as we did. But Andre Russell, Dinesh Karthik really did put a partnership together, once you do that taking advantage of the conditions here, it’s very difficult to stop.
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“A partnership going in that manner and then following that Pat Cummins the way he played really gave us every chance towards the end. Tremendous fight from our middle and lower order which is all you can ask for when you lose wickets upfront like that,” he mentioned on the put up-match presentation.
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“The first five overs of our batting didn’t go our way. We didn’t play as well as would have liked. If we had built a partnership and taken advantage of those early overs going into those middle overs, we would have been in a really strong position.
“We can be happy with the way we adapted to new ground, different challenges. Going back to it now having watched our guys bat, I don’t think there was a great deal of margin of error. So we have to be a little bit kinder to our bowlers when we walk off.
“Having been hit for 220 and then nearly getting close, being five down very early, you have to be honest with the bowlers about execution. It does make a huge amount of difference but you really have to be on the money here.”
Morgan was glad Russell was in large placing kind.
“I tend to stay away from Andre after he’s got out. When he’s in the form like this, he’s as good a player as any in the tournament, particularly when he strikes the ball like that. It’s great that he’s been in this sort of form. it’s disappointing that the rest of us couldn’t help him out. He’ll obviously be disappointed.”
Meanwhile, Man of the Match for his 60-ball 95* Faf du Plessis mentioned:
“This was the most fluent I’ve felt so far. Felt the previous game things started to get better. Tonight was another step. It’s about the rhythm of the flow of the hands. Few games before this and even tonight spinners were the best bowlers. Even Jadeja bowled well for us. The ball just grips a bit. We thought the seamers from the other side we can catch up. He’s a fantastic young talent, Gaikwad. Those first couple of balls you can feel on edge as a batter. Beautiful to see him trust the timing and the technique. For a small guy he hits the ball a long way. Been very lucky playing under MS for a long time. He knows what he’s doing, pleasure to play under him.”
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