IPL 2019, RR vs KXIP, Who Said What: World reacts as KXIP start the season in style
Today we witnessed the first big controversy of this season of the IPL. When Jos Buttler was looking set to take the game away from KXIP, Ravichandran Ashwin noticed that the opener had left his crease way too early. The KXIP captain could not have let this opportunity pass, as he removed the bails at non-striker's end without even releasing the ball.
Everyone was wondering what was happening, but Ashwin knew what he did. The Indian off-spinner became the first bowler to 'mankad' a batsman in the history of the T20 cricket. Jos Buttler was livid with the situation because Ashwin had not followed the protocol of warning the batsman.
Buttler had played a very good innings to set a great platform for the rest of the batsmen. Steve Smith joined Sanju Samson at the crease and the two batsmen continued the job from where Buttler had left. But Sam Curran's 17th over changed the course of the match, as the English all-rounder picked the wickets of both set batsmen in one over.
Afghanistan off-spinner Mujeeb ur Rahman picked the wickets of Ben Stokes and Rahul Tripathi in one over to put his team on the driver's seat. This derailed RR's run chase and they kept losing wickets after that.
Eventually, KXIP's death bowling helped the franchise in registering their first win at the Sawai Mansingh stadium. In the space of about four overs, the hosts lost seven wickets.
Earlier RR captain Ajinkya Rahane had won the toss and elected to field first on a pitch which had very less help for the bowlers. Chris Gayle was on fire as he scored 79 runs and contributions from the likes of Sarfaraz Khan and Mayank Agarwal helped KXIP post a target of 185 for RR. Jofra Archer was the pick of the bowlers for RR giving away just 17 runs in his quota of four overs.
This win will be a huge confidence booster for Ashwin's men who will now take on KKR on Wednesday. Let's see how the world reacted to this match.
Ravi Ashwin, winning captain: We all know that after six overs it is going to slow down. Credit to bowlers on how they bowled. I have been working on a lot of variations, pretty happy that it came out. No really argument on that (incident with Buttler) and its pretty instinctive.
I was not even at the crease and he just left the crease. We ended on the right side of the coin, but I definitely think that those are game-changing moments. Sam had a bad day with the ball, but he came back well. Everybody ticked their boxes
Ajinkya Rahane: "I thought we were batting really well. We started off well at the top and then got another good partnership. Later on we needed 39 off 4 overs and we thought that could have been done easily. But KXIP bowled really well in the last three overs. We are not supposed to comment on a controversial issue. The match referee will take the call. We will take the decision sportively. When you are chasing 180 plus, someone has to go really hard. Definitely, Jofra bowled really well. He was good for us in the last season as well. Jos, we all know how dangerous he is."
Chris Gayle, Man of the Match: This is a big ground and it is really important to score runs in the first game. What was more important is that we got a win. We just keep getting better and better. It's still early days and I'm enjoying my cricket. Eventually they got a better wicket to bat on but our bowlers did the job the for us. Our youngsters have a lot to offer for the team, they want to win the IPL for the Universe Boss."
Gaurav Kalra :
Deepu Narayanan:
Ayaz Menon :
Harsha Bhogle :
Bharath Seervi:
Akash Chopra:
Paul Newman:
Dean Jones:
Michael Vaughan:
Piers Morgan :
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