By the end of three overs in the chase, RCB were 37. Salt was the early aggressor, but Kohli wasn’t much behind. Then came the over that perhaps ended the game. The fourth of the innings.
Varun Chakravarthy, bowling much earlier than KKR would have planned. Kohli took a run off the first ball, and then Salt went 2, 4, 6, 4 and 4. One of the stars of India’s Champions Trophy win and KKR’s spin frontman, taken down.
“This is completely walking the talk, the way Salt and Virat started, and the way Virat ended, [it] was setting a precedent, and saying, ‘you know what, this is the kind of cricket we’re going to play; if you can score more than us, all the best’,”
Varun Aaron, the former India quick, said on ESPNcricinfo’s T20 TimeOut show.
Former India batter
Ambati Rayudu added, “That over quickly sealed it, the confidence of KKR was completely shattered in that over.”
By the end of ten overs, RCB were 104 for 1, with Salt gone. KKR, earlier, were 107 for 2 after ten overs. Not too different. But it’s not just about the numbers. You knew it had gone away from KKR by then. Kohli being in the middle was a major factor. It was a chase, after all.
“Kohli, generally, loves to finish the game, stay not out. But here, he stayed not out with the intent. He continued batting with that intent,” Rayudu said. “That shows that… if Kohli is ready to do that, the rest eight [batters] will do that for RCB. And that’s a great, great sight. That shows his leadership in the batting department.”
Kohli batted till the end, remaining unbeaten on 59 off 36 balls. He hit four fours and three sixes in his innings, not slowing down at any stage. The fifty came up with a four off
Harshit Rana in the 13th over. And then, with the target within touching distance and
Rajat Patidar first and then
Liam Livingstone dealing mostly in biggies, Kohli stood at the other end and watched the fun.
“Everyone sings his praise for a reason: he gets these runs, especially when the team needs it, in a chase,” Aaron said. “There are a lot of batsmen who get a lot of first-innings centuries, first-innings runs, but he always manages to get those important runs in a chase. And that is priceless to any team, to the Indian team, to RCB, and leadership in his own role is going to be important for RCB.”
On the subject of leadership, there was Patidar, RCB’s new captain who has now started this phase of his career with a big win. When he walked out, at 118 for 2 in the 12th over, the runs still had to be scored. He scored 34 of them, and he scored them in just 16 balls. And earlier in the day, he rung in the changes, and though the changes didn’t seem to work in the first half of the KKR innings, they came off later, especially with the
reintroduction of Krunal Pandya.
“The first game, he looked a little nervous, which is obvious, because when you are leading your team at such a big stage,”
Piyush Chawla, the former India legspinner, said. “But as the tournament will progress, he will look even better, because today, the way he made [bowling] changes, it’s a think-out-of-the-box kind of a thought process, he looked good.”
With all that intent in the chase, the two points were in the bag in 16.2 overs. KKR had been 153 for 6 at the same stage in their innings, and scored just 21 more in the 22 remaining balls. That – the wickets in the middle overs and the lack of runs at the end, as a result – was where the game was won and lost. As Kohli, Salt and Patidar underscored in their rapid chase.
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