It was two hours of total carnage as Kolkata Knight Riders destroyed Delhi Capitals’ bowlers in their IPL 2024 fixture in Vizag, on Wednesday. DC bowlers were tortured as KKR ended up posting 272/7 in 20 overs, which is also the second-highest total in IPL history.
It all began with Sunil Narine’s fiery blitz at the top, as he also bagged his highest score in T20 cricket. Narine clobbered 85 off 39 balls, packed with seven fours and seven sixes to give his side a strong platform. Meanwhile, 18-year-old Angkrish Raghuvanshi showed grit as he smacked 54 off 27 deliveries, including five fours and three sixes. What made it worse for DC was that Raghuvanshi didn’t look like he was on his debut, but rather seemed like an experienced IPL veteran.
Speaking after the match, DC head coach Ricky Ponting lashed out at his team in a bombshell statement. “It’s pretty hard to assess right now. I was almost embarrassed with that first-half of the game today, to concede that many runs and 17 wides. It took us two hours as well to bowl our overs. We are two overs behind again, so the guys who bowl the last two overs have four players outside the circle,” he said.
“There are a lot of things that happened today in this game that are unacceptable. A lot of things we will talk about as a group tonight, we will have to fix immediately to go forward in this tournament. So there will be some good open discussions in the changing room tonight for sure,” he further added.
The first innings saw DC’s bowlers go haywire with their deliveries as KKR displayed proper power-hitting. Despite taking three wickets, Anrich Nortje conceded 59 runs. Meanwhile, Khaleel Ahmed leaked 43 runs, Ishant Sharma conceded 43, Rasikh Salam also gave away 47.
Such was DC’s poor batting display that KKR registered their most sixes in a single team innings in IPL history, clattering 18. Their second-highest was in 2018, when they smacked 17 sixes against CSK in Chennai.
Chasing 273, DC were bowled out for 166 in 17.2 overs, despite half-centuries from Rishabh Pant (55) and Tristan Stubbs (54). For KKR’s bowling department, Vaibhav Arora and Varun Chakravarthy took three wickets each respectively.
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