Mumbai : Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) suffered their fifth successive defeat of the ongoing season after Delhi Capitals (DC) completed a season double over the former two-time champions by sealing a four-wicket win in match no. 41 of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium on Thursday.
Interestingly, Kolkata’s five-match losing streak started against Delhi Capitals on April 10 when the Rishabh Pant-led side hammered Shreyas Iyer’s team by 44 runs at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai. After that, KKR lost to SunRisers Hyderabad (7 wickets), Rajasthan Royals (7 runs), Gujarat Titans (8 runs) and DC (4 wickets).
This is the third-longest streak of successive defeats for Kolkata in the Indian Premier League, as earlier KKR had lost six straight games in 2009 and 6 consecutive matches in 2019. After this defeat, Shreyas Iyer joined his coach Brendon McCullum (who was leading KKR in 2009) and Dinesh Karthik (KKR skipper in 2019) on the unwanted list.
However, if KKR does not mend their team ways, then the Shreyas Iyer-led side may very well land on top of the unwanted list. Kolkata Knight Riders are the team to have made the most number of changes to their starting XI and that suggests they’re still searching for the right combination. They still have five games with each one turning into a must-win from hereon.
Earlier, Kuldeep Yadav weaved his magic with the ball to restrict his former IPL team Kolkata to a modest 146 for 9 after Rishabh Pant won the toss and opted to field first. With the exception of skipper Shreyas Iyer (42), the KKR top-order struggled to get going against the Capitals’ bowlers at the Wankhede Stadium.
Batting at number six, Nitish Rana top-scored with 57 off 34 balls and hit three fours and four sixes, even as the others failed to leave KKR reeling at 35/4 at one stage. Kuldeep was the most impressive bowler with figures of 4/14 from three overs, while Mustafizur Rahman took three wickets in a brilliant final over.
David Warner laid the foundation and then DC overcame a middle-order collapse thanks to Rovman Powell (33 not out) and Axar Patel (24), who played useful cameos to help their team chase down the 147-run target with an over to spare.
Shreyas Iyer, losing captain, said, ‘ We started off really slowly and lost a couple of early wickets. It was holding up a bit (the wicket), but we didn’t get a good score on the board. No real excuses, we have to go back and assess where things are going wrong. A lot of chopping and changing is happening (at the top of the order), it’s been difficult to set up the right combination, with all injuries not helping as well. We need to stick together, play some fearless cricket, not be conservative with the bat.
Five more matches remaining, we need to play well, show belief and give something back to the team and the management, forget about the past, start fresh and back your instinct (on what KKR needs to do now). You need to sit back and think where it’s going wrong, can’t be overconfident, give your best, if we still lose, then it’s fine.
Umesh started with a wicket, but gave away 11 runs in the over, that’s where I thought the momentum turned. But he has given us a lot of good moments this season and has been very very impressive as well.’