Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) captain KL Rahul played a bizarre knock on April 10 (Monday) against the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). In a run chase of 213 runs, the stylish right-handed never found any sort of rhythm in his innings before Mohammed Siraj brought an end to Rahul's misery on the crease. The LSG skipper was in the middle till 11.1 overs but could only muster 18 runs off 20 balls with the help of one boundary.
After the game, Rahul voiced unhappiness with his knock and affirmed that needs to be better, both in terms of scoring runs and doing so with a decent strike rate.
"I want to score more runs and I think I score more runs, the strike rate goes up. We have played a couple of games in tough wickets in Lucknow. Today we lost 3 wickets so I look at the situation and I felt like I did the right thing and if I could have carried on and stayed there till the end and stayed with Nicky, could've won the game a lot easier. Once I get some good knocks under my belt I'll start feeling good and that will go up," Rahul said in the post-match presentation.
In what will go down as one of the most memorable T20 matches of all time, Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) registered a nerve-jangling one-wicket win on the last ball of the game against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru. Needing one run off the final delivery of the match, LSG secured the win in a bizarre fashion.
"Unbelievable. This is the Chinnaswamy, only venue where so many last finishes are possible. From the possibility we were in to end up winning in superb," Rahul said reflecting on the game.
"When you are chasing 210 + you need to go hard. Sometimes you lose wickets but the ball was swinging a bit early for them and got wickets. That puts some pressure on you but the way Stoin and Pooran played was brilliant. The reason we have got 2 points here is because of the way they batted," he further added.
Lucknow's victory was powered by the prowess of Marcus Stoinis and the power-hitting ability of Nicholas Pooran after the team stuttered in their run chase. Pooran smashed the fastest fifty of the season and the joint-second fastest in the history of the competition to guide their team over the line while chasing a mammoth target of 212 runs. He rode on the momentum of Marcus Stoinis, who also smashed 65 runs off 30 balls to shift the pressure back on the RCB bowlers after they took the early wickets of Kyle Mayers (0), Krunal Pandya (0) and Deepak Hooda (9).
Pooran played an outrageous knock of 62 runs off 19 balls. During his thunderous knock, the left-handed explosive batter smashed four fours and seven sixes.
Rahul also underlined that in T20 cricket middle-order is the most important in a batting line-up.
"In T20s number 5, 6 and 7 are the most important batting positions. That's where most games are won, at least the crunch games. Yes, the top order will do the bulk of the scoring in top tournaments like these but it's those boys who really win you games and win you big games and that's why we invested in power in Stoin and Pooran and Ayush is coming off his own," Rahul said.
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