Why did the ball hit the woman so late?
When Sunil Narine came in to bowl from Kolkata Knight Riders against Chennai Super Kings in the 12th over, Shane Watson and Ambati Rayudu needed a partnership of 64 and CSK needed 74 to win in nine overs. Cumt Cummins had just finished fourth.
His bowling could not be delayed in terms of match-up: Before the game, Watson had scored 88 off Nar 83 Narine with eight dismissals. Rayudu scored 41 runs in his 50 overs with three dismissals. Clearly, they are not players who are very comfortable against Narayan.
Which suggests that perhaps from the beginning the plan was to use Narayan in the second half of the innings. We know he has the highest number against Dhoni, but surely you don’t stick your whole plan on that one match? What else would it be, though? Perhaps the fact that the Knight Riders are using Cummins to front up means that the young fast bowlers will have to bowl to death along with Andre Russell. Instead of handing over that responsibility to him in full, they decided to give it to Narayan.
The use of Varun Chakraborty later in the innings also suggests that he may have felt that there was something about the conditions that helped spin bowling. Chakraborty gave him a quick wicket from Dhoni, who put serious pressure on CSK at the end of the chase and in the end it was the final touch of a fine tactical win, sealing Narine’s 19th seal, which was just 10 runs when 36 were needed.
Why was Jadeja not bowling, and why was Karna so effective?
C.S.K. So not trusting the spinners is a feeling of character, and this feeling backs up the figure: on just 23 occasions out of 170 bowling innings in the IPL – one of them tonight – have they been able to bowl in just four overs? Spin or less. It’s also surprising that none of those four overs tonight came from Ravindra Jadeja, probably because he was the left-handed KKR batsman at almost every stage before tonight’s slog over.
Legspinner Karan Sharma, meanwhile, worked hard. He didn’t say a single short ball, according to ESPNcricinfo’s length data, and finished with a 0-0-2 with-2 despite an expensive over. It was a very good return for the leg-spinner because of how many IPL titles he has won, winning three in three years with Sunrisers, Mumbai and CSK, his team could never guarantee. Our data suggests he bowled a stf stump or wide bowling for the most part against right-handed batsmen today, so he was barely in the hitting zone for them.
More impressively, the left-handers had no hitting options against him either: he didn’t accept a single left-handed boundary and even dismissed two of them.
Why did KKRA choose to bat?
They never do that. Well, not since May 2015 anyway. The last time was when Gautam Gambhir was still the captain and Delhi was still the Daredevils.
Even this season, they were bowled on both occasions after winning the toss. Maybe when you have batsmen like Andre Russell, Eoin Morgan and Dinesh Karthik, who have been the right finishers for themselves over time, even if they are not in the best form at the moment – it is an exciting option to chase.
But after that, in many ways, batting was not in the right place for him. They were losing early wickets at the top and were not consistently memorable performances from the big names mentioned above. They lost in their previous game chasing Sharjah, so it could lead to a batting decision today. Or it could just be simple that they are following the tide – the captains have started batting first with success in this tournament, and it happened again tonight.
Why did Tripathi open, and this game is about sending Naren to 4?
Rahul Tripathi took Narin’s starting position, and there was enough work for everyone involved. Tripathi has scored three fifties in his last four innings as an IPL opener, so it was fitting that he was pushed. There were a lot of shocking voices around – Ben Stokes among them – when Narine came in at No. 4 against Morgan, but Nari did her best. He scored 17 runs for 9 runs. Missing opening?
Women before Morgan ???
– Ben Stokes (@ Benstokes 38) October October 7, 2020
The CSK line-up does not have an elite pace, which is kind of troubling to a Narine batsman, so in many ways KKR is attacking itself. But his innings is 9 for 17. KKR will accept from him, no matter where he bats. Left-handed batsman, he also ended up taking back the ball to legspinner Karan Sharma, which was a bonus that KNR’s right-handed players did not use later.
Why did Russell only bowl at death?
Andre Russell has a designated role this season. He has bowled 42 balls from his 60 deliveries after the 16th over, and his death-over economy rate of 8.57 and five wickets show that this is the plan for KKR.
They have already tried different bowling strategies for the season, including bowling six and seven bowlers. That depth in bowling is allowing him to get Pat Cummins out as early as possible and attack the top order. And, so, it helps Russell capture another experienced fast bowler to death.
When he arrived today, CSK were shocked by Dhoni’s loss, but needed 13 overs with Sam Curran, Kedar Jadhav, Ravindra Jadeja and Dwayne Bravo available. Russell’s speed, direction and length – decisively short of all six balls in his first over – did not give him any best performance and effectively killed the game as he got only three runs in that over.
Russell later said he decided to just go cross-seam in the end, as he assessed that it was difficult to put him down based on what came out as soon as possible. This kind of intuition and vision – and the ability to plan around it – could mean that we see Russell for a while in this role, especially when KKR will try to catch two fast bowlers they don’t want to disclose. Death.