Sunil Narine is one of the worst runners between the wickets. He doesn’t believe in taking singles and doubles and only wants to hit four and sixes. In Kolkata Knight Riders’first game of IPL 2024, he paid the price for his casual running.
Phil Salt played a defensive stroke and his batting partner Narine came out of the crease to take a run. However, the striker refused and Sunil had enough time to get back into the crease but he thought walking instead of running and the end result was his run out.
He scored 2 runs off 4 balls before Shabaz Ahmed’s direct through ended his innings.
Sunrisers Hyderabad were on top at the time of writing with KKR losing captain Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer as well. While Shreyas failed to open the account, Venkatesh managed 7.
Nitish Rana, who led the two-time champions in 2023, amassed 9 runs. T Natrajan, the left-arm pacer, took two wickets, while one scalp went to Mayank Markande.
Earlier, Pat Cummins won the toss and invited the home franchise to bat first at the Eden Gardens. Cummins, who was bought for INR 20.50 crore, replaced Aiden Markram as the team’s skipper.
On the other hand, Shreyas retuned to lead the side after missing the last season due to back surgery. Both franchises haven’t been able to impress in the last few seasons and the pressure is on the management and players to break into playoffs.
Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Venkatesh Iyer, 2 Phil Salt (wk), 3 Shreyas Iyer (capt), 4 Rinku Singh, 5 Nitish Rana, 6 Sunil Narine, 7 Andre Russell, 8 Ramandeep Singh, 9 Mitchell Starc, 10 Harshit Rana, 11 Varun Chakravarthy. The impact-sub options are Suyash, Pandey, Arora, Raghuvanshi and Gurbaz.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: 1 Mayank Agarwal, 2 Rahul Tripathi, 3 Aiden Markram, 4 Heinrich Klaasen (wk), 5 Abdul Samad, 6 Shahbaz Ahmed, 7 Marco Jansen, 8 Pat Cummins (capt), 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Mayank Markande, 11 T Natarajan. The impact-sub options are Reddy, Washington, Malik, Phillips and Abhishek.