Ask any staunch Kolkata Knight Riders fan and ‘that’ match still means the IPL opener in 2008 when Brendon McCullum had unleashed hell on an unsuspecting Royal Challengers Bangalore. That may change, with KKR bettering that epochal 222 by 50 runs, almost taking down the highest IPL score this season but still finishing with the second highest score ever.
Delhi Capitals were the hapless recipients of this spectacular mauling on a belter of a pitch at Visakhapatnam on Wednesday, guilty of dropping catches, bowling wide, high, all over the place really till it didn’t matter anymore. Defeat came in the form of a 106-run thrashing, but it could have been worse had Rishabh Pant and Tristan Stubbs hadn’t dug in their heels with resilient fifties.
It wasn’t enough of course, considering how KKR kept rolling out their big guns and each of them fired exactly the way they were meant to. Runs were scored at a phenomenal pace as Sunil Narine smashed 85 — his highest IPL score — off just 39 balls (7×4, 7×6); Angkrish Raghuvanshi piled 54 at a strike rate of 200 (27b, 5×4, 3×6), Andre Russell 41 off 19 balls and Rinku Singh nonchalantly smoked three sixes in an eight-ball 26.
Every ball was timed sweetly, every drive and punch found the gap with ease and every six stayed hit as KKR matched 18 fours with 18 sixes in an encore of the carnage Sunrisers Hyderabad had inflicted on Mumbai Indians barely a week back. KKR could have easily overtaken 277, but Ishant Sharma finally found his rhythm at the fag end of his spell, comprehensively yorking Russell before dismissing Ramandeep Singh in an eight-run over.
There was only one way the Capitals could have responded. Pant was in vintage form, whacking 55 off 25 balls (4×4, 5×6) in a 93-run fifth-wicket stand with Stubbs but the chase could never really take off after Prithvi Shaw, Mitchell Marsh and David Warner were all dismissed within the Powerplay. Stubbs was also valiant in resisting but once Mitchell Starc caught him at deep backward square-leg, Capitals ran out of steam.
In hindsight, Pant would deeply regret not reacting more quickly to Marsh’s fervent appeals to review an under-edge off Narine’s bat in the fourth over that everyone else seemed to have missed. Soon enough, UltraEdge spotted a slight disturbance when the ball was going past the bat. Narine was on 24 then. His next 61 runs came off 26 balls, fuelled by five more sixes as Capitals completely lost the plot against Narine. It all started with Khaleel Ahmed being milked for 15 in his second over before Sharma was clobbered for 26 runs in the over he had got that edge off Narine.
Phil Salt wasn’t timing the ball well but with Narine overcompensating from the other end, KKR were probably happy to have the 18-year-old Raghuvanshi come in and blast away as if he was a pro on this circuit. First ball, he swivelled across its line and pulled Anrich Nortje for a crisp boundary. Next ball, he stood tall and punched Nortje past point for another four. Narine was dealing in sixes all this time, corking three off Sharma before thumping Rasikh Salam over long-on. In the dugout prowled Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer, clearly not acquainted with waiting so deep into an innings.
No one complained though as Narine hacked apart Capitals’ bowling, clearing his front leg and allowing his bat a ferocious swing. No length, no line was safe but Capitals also probably played into Narine’s hands by not varying the pace to him. By the time Marsh had started taking pace off the ball in the 10th over, KKR had already raced to 126/1. KKR had a stranglehold over the innings by then though. Raghuvanshi swatted two sixes off Salam before Narine finally departed, only for Russell to take over and bat the only way he knew, striking at a shade over 215.
Shreyas Iyer too hit two sixes but trust Rinku Singh to take T20 batting to a whole new level. When Nortje went full and wide, he stayed low and sliced the South African over third man for six. Dealt with a low full toss, he came up with an audacious one-handed slap six over deep extra-cover. Another full and wide ball was carted over wide long-on with such disdain that even Russell couldn’t help chuckling. It was that kind of a day.
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