Only on Tuesday night, at the end of match No 56 between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Mumbai Indians, will we know which of the four teams make it to the playoffs at IPL 2020. For 48 hours or so (maybe lesser, depending on the outcome of the match on Monday), Kolkata Knight Riders endure a nervy wait to find out if they will be one of those four. But they made sure it is not an improbable scenario, with a big win over fellow playoff contenders Rajasthan Royals on Sunday.
To win by 60 runs in a T20 match is not the easiest of things to do, especially when both sides have so much riding on the game. The fact that Royals decided to go hard at the run-chase from the word go (perhaps in search of an improbable win to help their Net Run Rate) and ended up losing five wickets in the powerplay, played a part in KKR’s margin of victory. But that should not take the sheen away from their approach to the match: brave, aggressive and on-the-money.
In the middle of the KKR batting innings, coach Brendon McCullum was having a chat with the commentators from the sidelines and spoke about Andre Russell’s inclusion for the match despite being nowhere near 100% fit.
“He was desperate to get out there: he’s nowhere near 100% fit, but if he gets hot for half an hour then we’re going to post a really big score,” McCullum said in the 15th over, when the scoreboard read 121/5. And just as he did, Russell got an outside edge for four off the imperious Jofra Archer and followed that up with a six over square leg off a bouncer, perceived to be one of his weaknesses. In the next over, Russell hit back-to-back sixes of Kartik Tyagi before letting out a cry of anguish at getting caught in the deep.
“I have a grade two, grade three hamstring tear and I’m just privileged to actually be back running around,” Russell told Star Sports after the match to corroborate what McCullum had said.
But, in the space of 10 balls, when KKR had already lost five wickets, their star allrounder with one good leg, stood up and delivered a crucial cameo that helped his side keep the foot on the gas.
And then there was Captain Morgan.
In the match against Chennai Super Kings, inexplicably, the KKR think-tank thought it was a good idea to promote both Sunil Narine and Rinku Singh over Morgan to take on the spinners. The KKR captain ended up facing his 12th and final delivery in the last over of the innings. Whatever you say about match-ups, that was not smart cricket.
But on Sunday against RR, Morgan came in to bat ahead of Dinesh Karthik and Andre Russell, when the scoreboard read 74/3 after nine overs. The captain was taking center-stage on a big night.
We had already seen glimpses of this approach from KKR against Royal Challengers Bangalore in Sharjah, when they were reduced to 10/3. It was Morgan again, along with Shubman Gill, who led the counterattack then but it did not last long enough. But here, in the ring of fire as the Dubai stadium is called, Morgan produced a fiery innings that proved to be match-winning.
With a six off the third ball he faced, Morgan signalled his intent straight away. Then came a few quiet overs as he lost Rahul Tripathi and Dinesh Karthik at the other end, the scoreboard reading 100/5 at the end of 13 overs.
Now, as the captain, Morgan could have gone two ways from there. The responsible, safe option would have been to make sure he stays till the 20th over and give KKR a fighting total to defend. Instead, he took the more courageous call of going after the bowling, despite knowing there’s not much batting to come.
In the 14th over, he went four-four-six-six off Shreyas Gopal’s bowling to move on to 40 off 18 balls. In the last 17 balls he faced, he scored 28 more runs to finish with 68 off 35 balls. Even in the last over, when there were chances to take a single, he denied it on two deliveries to hit a six off the last ball.
Seemingly, at every possible juncture, Morgan took the bravest possible option instead of settling for a safe bet. Perhaps the same could not be said with his bowling plans at the back-end of Royals’ run-chase (that never got going), and automatic qualification eluded them but like Morgan said at the end, on the night, they possibly could not have done too much more.
Indeed, KKR’s tournament has been a strange one during the group stages. They won matches that they had no business winning. They lost matches they should have done better in. They made some brave tactical calls. They made some not-so-smart match-up decisions. But, in their last group-stage match, a do-or-die scenario, they made sure they won’t die wondering.
The win against RR, in the end, was not enough to guarantee a place in the top four but KKR give themselves a good shout. As Morgan said in a chat with Cummins later on, this was the brand of cricket he would have liked KKR to play throughout the tournament. It came in the 14th match, whether it was too late or just in time, will be known in the next two days.