Kolkata Knight Riders pacer Nathan Coulter-Nile, after masterminding his side win against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Indian Premier League Eliminator, called for a revision of the rules in the franchise-based tournament after the match finished during the wee hours on Thursday, reported PTI.
Kolkata survived a rain scare to post a seven-wicket win via Duckworth-Lewis method after they were set a revised target of 48 runs from 6 overs in the rain-truncated contest.
“Well, no one really got nervous until when they went out there for the last look at about 12:40 am. It sorted of looked like I didn’t wanna play. I think there is so much time, rules probably need to be looked at, I mean, its 2 am; you can’t be playing cricket at 2 o’clock. But I wasn’t nervous at all. There was so much time, we had to get on,” Coulter-Nile said.
The Australian returned to his franchise with a three-wicket haul, which included a brilliant 19th over where he bagged the wickets of Hyderabad’s Vijay Shankar and Chris Jordan while conceding just three runs. The Australian seamer credited fellow Kolkata pacers Umesh Yadav and Trent Boult for handing him pointers. “I think I bowled the seventh or eighth over and they said ‘Look, cross-seamers into the wicket, throw them hard’ and you really rely on your teammates to give you some pointers on what to do...,” he said.
Coulter-Nile observed that the wicket of Hyderabad skipper David Warner by Piyush Chawla was the turning point of the match as the Australian is the most devastating batsman in the world. “Piyush removed Warner, [and] that I thought was the turning point. He is that kind of a bloke who can turn a 130 into a 150 or 160. That started with the first over,” the 29-year-old said.
Coulter-Nile stated Kolkata went for the kill right from ball one for the reduced target as a strategy because his team thought that the 129-run target was not going to be an easy one to chase down, given the slow nature of the wicket. “Well, 130 was a par score but it was a difficult wicket definitely. The cross-seam was holding up and the slower ones were getting a little bit of grip,” Coulter-Nile said. “So, it was tough to play and once the weather came in, it got a lot easy to bat. I think the balls skidding on, and once the ball’s wet it actually skidded through. There wasn’t a lot of turn or anything like that so I thought maybe 140 ... 10 runs make a lot of difference,” he added.
Talking about the anxious moments, he said: “When it was raining, we were quietly confident because 12.50 am was the cut off time. It kept raining and raining. The covers kept coming on and off. So, we were getting twitchy. KKR will now play MI on Friday at the same venue and will be praying that the rain gods will stay away,” he said.