Rajasthan Royals (RR) put on a good show with the ball to keep Lucknow Super Giants' (LSG) batters in check in their Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 clash at the Sawai Mansingh stadium in Jaipur on Wednesday (April 19).
RR skipper Sanju Samson won the toss and elected to bowl first. Bowling first RR restricted KL Rahul's men to 154/7 as Kyle Mayers remained the top scorer for LSG with 51 off 42.
RR's pace spearhead Trent Boult equalled Bhuvneshwar Kumar's unique record of bowling the most first over maiden in the IPL history. Boult came with the first over for RR and didn't concede a single run and thus became only the second bowler besides Bhuvneshwar to bowl the most first-over maidens in the cash-rich league history. Boult has bowled the joint-most first-over maidens in the IPL i.e 8 same as Bhuvneshwar. Boult returned with an impressive spell of 16/1 in which he snared a prized wicket of Ayush Badoni in the 12th over.
Most first-over maidens in IPL
Trent Boult- 8 maidens
Bhuvneshwar Kumar- 8 maidens
Praveen Kumar- 7 maidens
Irfan Pathan- 5 maidens
The New Zeland's star bowler has been sensational with the new ball in this IPL with an economy of 2.60 runs per over. Boult has bowled three maiden overs while opening the bowling in IPL 2023 already and has taken five wickets in the first over of IPL 2023 including a double-wicket maiden.
Talking about the match, besides Boult, Ravichandran Ashwin also put on a show with the ball as he returned with a spell of 23/2 but despite their exploits RR lost the match by 10 runs.
While chasing the target of 155, Yashasvi Jaiswal (44 off 35) and Jos Buttler (40 off 41) did score the bulk of the runs but were way slow in their approach which gave RR a sluggish start. After Marcus Stoinis removed both the RR openers, it was all but over for RR as even their skipper Samson couldn't go big in the match and was perished cheaply on the score of 2 off 4 balls. Avesh Khan was the pick of the bowler for LSG as he bowled a brilliant spell of 3/25.
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