BENGALURU: After defeating Royal Challengers Bangalore by 21 runs to end their four-match losing streak in IPL 2023, Kolkata Knight Riders captain Nitish Rana stated his team always had the belief of bouncing back in the competition.
On Wednesday, an aggressive 56 of 29 balls from Jason Roy and a quick 48 off 21 balls from captain Nitish Rana, along with unbeaten 18 and 12 from Rinku Singh and David Wiese propelled Kolkata to reach 200/5 on a dry-looking pitch at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium.
In defence of the total, Suyash Sharma began the pullback for Kolkata from the third over by taking 2/29, before Varun Chakaravarthy and Andre Russell picked 3/27 and 2/29 respectively in middle and death overs to restrict Bangalore to 179/8, despite captain Virat Kohli’s 54 off 37 balls and Mahipal Lomror impressing in an 18-ball 34.
It also marks the second time Kolkata beat Bangalore in the ongoing season and spinners wreaking havoc yet again.
“Last three-four matches, I have been saying if we start performing as a collective, we will get the results. We have enough character in the dressing room for not giving up the belief despite being where we were at the table. The belief has always been there that we’ll bounce back,” said Rana in the post-match presentation.
“Today we wanted to put up a total and hope for spin to come in. We thought it was dry and it would turn. As such it didn’t quite turn but our bowlers turned up. Suyash has always been the first to put his hand up and say I will do it for you. We hope to keep repeating what we did today,” he added.
On the other hand, RCB skipper Virat Kohli minced no words in saying that his side had caused their own downfall in losing to Kolkata. Rana was given lives on 5 and 19 by Mohammed Siraj and Harshal Patel in overs 13 and 15. With the bat, none apart from Kohli and Lomror stood up in the chase.
“To be honest we handed them the game. We did deserve to lose. We handed them a victory. We were certainly not up to standard. If you look at the game, we didn’t capitalize our chances. We dropped a few chances which cost us 25-30 runs,” said Kohli.
“We set up ourselves really well. We ended up hitting the fielder to balls which weren’t wicket taking. It is what’s on the scoreboard and how to get them. Even while chasing, despite losing wickets we were one partnership away from being in the game. We needed one partnership to get us home,” he added.
With Bangalore set to play five away games on the trot, Kohli feels his team to bounce back in a crucial away leg of matches.
“We need to be switched on and not give away soft plays. We have won one and lost one on the road. It is not something that is making us nervous. We need to win some away games to be in good shape for the later stages of the tournament,” he said.
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