‘You can't be playing cricket at 2am’

Kolkata Knight Riders pacer Nathan Coulter-Nile said there is a need to have a fresh look at the IPL rules after a 1.30 am finish to their rainhit IPL eliminator against Sunrisers Hyderabad here.

KKR survived a rain scare to notch up a seven wicket win via Duckworth-Lewis method after they were set a revised target of 48 runs from 6 overs in the rain-truncated eliminator last night.

"Well, no one really got nervous untill when they went out there for the last look at about 12:40am. It sorted of looked like I didn't wanna play. I think there is so much time, rules probably need to be looked at, I mean its 2am, you can't be playing cricket at 2 o' clock. But I wasn't nervous at all. There was so much time, we had to get on," he said after the match.

Coulter-Nile returned with a three-wicket haul, which included a brilliant 19th over where he bagged the wickets of SRH's Vijay Shankar and Chris Jordan and conceded just three runs.

The Australian seamer credited fellow KKR pacers Umesh Yadav and Trent Boult for giving him pointers which helped his bowling.

"I think I bowled the seventh or eighth over and they said 'Look, cross-seamers into the wicket, throw them hard' and you really rely on your teammates to give you some pointers on what to do…," he said.

Coulter-Nile said the wicket of SRH skipper David Warner by Piyush Chawla was the turning point of the match as the Australian is the most devastating batsman in the world.

"Piyush removed Warner, that I thought was the turning point. He is that kind of a bloke who can turn a 130 into a 150 or 160. That started with the first over," he said.

Coulter-Nile said KKR went for the kill right from ball one for the reduced 48run target as a strategy because 129- run target was not going to be an easy one to chase down, given the slow nature of the wicket here.