On Tuesday, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) faced an embarrassing 10-run defeat against Mumbai Indians (MI) in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 at MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai.
After electing to field first, KKR bowled out the defending champions for 152, thanks to Andre Russell, who picked up a five-wicket haul. Then, in their run-chase, the Knight Riders looked comfortable after Nitish Rana and Shubman Gill had put together a 72-run stand for the opening wicket.
However, Rahul Chahar’s sensational bowling helped MI to make a comeback in the game. Chahar ended up picking four wickets by dismissing the top-4 batters of the Eoin Morgan-led side.
Apart from Chahar, Jasprit Bumrah, Trent Boult, and Krunal Pandya bowled tremendously well and didn’t give the KKR batters much chance to roll back in the contest. In the end, the two-time champions only managed to reach 142/7.
After the match, Shah Rukh Khan, the co-owner of Knight Riders, laid out his reaction on social media. The King of Bollywood looked disappointed with his team’s performance and apologised to the KKR fans on Twitter.
“Disappointing performance. to say the least @KKRiders apologies to all the fans!” Shah Rukh wrote on Twitter.
Disappointing performance. to say the least @KKRiders apologies to all the fans!
— Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) April 13, 2021
Russell, who displayed a remarkable performance with the ball, gave his opinion on SRK’s tweet and said he supports what the Bollywood superstar said. The Jamaican said they are going to learn a lot from this game.
“Yeah, I support that Tweet, but at the end of the day, the game of cricket… you are not sure until it’s over. I think we are still confident, we still played some good cricket, and I am proud of the boys. You know, we are definitely disappointed, but it’s not the end of the world, it’s only the second game, and we are going to learn from it,” said Russell in the post-match presser.
Russell, who was dismissed in the final over by Trent Boult for 9 runs off 15 balls, said he has faith in the lads and hopeful that they would bounce back.
“I have played hundreds of T20 games, and I have seen games where teams cruise in on the driver’s seat and then suddenly lose a few wickets, and that’s what happened tonight. So, we definitely have to learn from this. We will look to make sure that who’s in, stays in and once we learn from all these mistakes, we will definitely do better. I have trust and confidence in the boys,” he added.
