Four masterstrokes from KKRvsRCB game
The third match of the Indian Premier league saw Royal Challengers Bangalore taking on Kolkata Knight Riders. Dinesh Karthik won the toss and decided to take the field first.
RCB started their innings a bit scratchily losing De Kock early; Kohli was also finding it hard to time the ball until De Villiers entered the field and started smashing everything out of the park.
The things changed when Kohli and De Villiers got dismissed in the same over but thanks to Mandeep Singh’s knock that RCB posted a respectable total of 176.
KKR’s inning started with a bang as Sunil Narine took RCB bowlers to cleaners. Umesh Yadav bowled nicely in the middle overs but a sensible innings from Karthik and some big shots from Andre Russel helped KKR achieve the target easily.
#1 Introduction of Wrist spinners in the power play
The newly appointed skipper of Kolkata Knight Riders, Karthik used a very interesting strategy to prevent the flow of runs in the power play.
Out of the six powerplay overs, Karthik used his wrist spinners, Piyush Chawla and Kuldeep Yadav for five overs.
In the very first over when McCullum smashed Vinay Kumar for 14 runs, Karthik was quick to realise that he needed to slow things down and bring on his spinners.
The move turned out to be a masterstroke as both the spinners not only stopped the flow of runs but also scalped the prize wicket of De Kock.