Abu Dhabi: Skipper KL Rahul smashed the first century of the 2020 Indian Premier League (IPL) to propel Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) to a daunting 206 for three against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) here on Thursday.
That hurricane knock laid the foundation for his team to record a thumping 97-run win.
KL Rahul, Player of the Match and KXIP captain, said, ‘Not really (hitting it this well). I have actually been not so confident. I had a chat with Maxi yesterday, he said how are you feeling, I said that I am not feeling completely in control of my batting, he said you must be joking, you are hitting really well. Quite honestly I was nervous but I knew if I spend time in the middle, hit a few balls from the middle of bat, it will all settle down. I try to do (the same routines as I did when I was a player) but as a captain you have shortened time and you are running around and doing a lot of things. I still try to maintain the same routine. Once I am in the middle and during the toss is the only time I feel like a captain and otherwise I try to balance being a player and the captain. It’s as complete a team performance as it can get. We had few different plans going into this game. We knew RCB have a power packed batting line up and we had to get 2-3 wickets up front and that also meant putting runs on the board, we know what these guys can do if they get set. The analyst, coaches and the management will be happy. Something that has impressed me in him (Bishoni’s heart of coming back even after an expensive start). I watched the U-19 World Cup. He has a lot of fight in him. Every time I throw the ball he wants to do well, he was a little nervous bowling at guys like Finchy and AB, once he got through that he did well.’
Virat Kohli, RCB captain, said, ‘ Yeah it didn’t (go well). I think we were good in the middle phase with the ball, they got off to a decent start and we pulled things back nicely. I have to stand in front and take the brunt of it, not the best day in the office, couple of important chances of KL when he was set and that cost us 35-40 runs at a later stage. Maybe if we restricted them to 180 we wouldn’t have been under pressure from ball one of the chase. We know exactly where we went wrong and I have to put my hand up and say a couple of important chances went down. There are days when these kind of things happen on the cricket field, they happen and we have to accept them. We have had a good game, we have had a bad game and now it is time to move on. Learn from the mistakes we make. We did pretty well closing in on the second time out. Those are the moments, we pulled things back nicely so we understand how to do that as a team. He (Philippe) has batted at the top of the order for Western Australia and done well in the BBL as well, early days in the tournament so we thought we will maximise his ability and see how we go from thereon. We thought we will give ourselves a bit of depth in the middle overs’.