EARLY BATTING FLOP GAVE KKR LITTLE CHANCE, SAYS GAMBHIR

Kolkata Knight Riders captain Gautam Gambhir said the collapse of his team’s batting order in the early overs left the team with little chance to defend their poor total against Mumbai Indians, resulting in the inevitable loss. MI won the toss and put Kolkata Knight Riders in to bat first in the Qualifier 2 match of the 2017 Indian Premier League season on Friday.

Kolkata Knight Riders managed a poor 107 all out in 18.5 overs as Mumbai Indians pacer Jasprit Bumrah and spinner Karn Sharma dismantled the batting order.

The fall of three Kolkata Knight Riders wickets in the powerplay overs, managing just 25 runs was a huge loss for Gambhir’s side. The 25 runs they managed was their worst tally in the first six overs of any IPL match this season. Bumrah scalped Chris Lynn (4) and Robin Uthappa (1) while Sharma dismissed Sunil Narine (10).

TARGET NOT ENOUGH

Gambhir said the target given to Mumbai Indians was not good enough to defend unless they had hope of dismissing the entire side. “We discussed after the last game that we couldn’t get 160170, we needed 140. We lost too many wickets early on. 107 is not a great score unless you can get the opposition all out,” Gambhir said after the match on Friday.

“We had to be up for it. Had we had wickets, we could have targetted one or two bowlers,” he added. Nevertheless Gambhir said he was happy with the effort his team put into the 2017 season.

“Proud, because we put everything we could. We had two opportunities, we missed it. We could have had two cracks at the top two. The boys were professional through the season,” Gambhir said.