Shreyas Iyer reveals why Venkatesh Iyer was bowled ahead of Andre Russell during crucial juncture of the match versus RCB.
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During the sixth match of the ongoing 15th season of the Indian Premier League at Dr DY Patil Cricket Stadium in Mumbai, the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) defeated Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by 3 wickets, in what was yet another humdinger of a match in the early phase of the tournament.
Chasing mere 128 runs posted by KKR in the first innings, Faf du Plessis’ men got off to an even worse start than their rivals, having lost 3 wickets during the Powerplay with only 36 runs on the board.
The overseas all-rounder duo of David Willey (18 off 28) and Sherfane Rutherford (28 off 40) then took the burden upon themselves to rescue the drowning ship, but it was a lovely little innings by Shahbaz Ahmed (27 off 20) that blew life into the chase.
The Southpaw smashed a couple of sixes off Andre Russell during the 13th Over of the chase, which provided the much required momentum to the innings. Ultimately, with 7 runs required off the final Over, a calm-headed Dinesh Karthik (14* off 7) finished the deal with four deliveries to spare.
🤩🤩🙌🏻🙌🏻#PlayBold #WeAreChallengers #IPL2022 #Mission2022 #RCB #ನಮ್ಮRCB #RCBvKKR https://t.co/ILIe3zVa4R
— Royal Challengers Bangalore (@RCBTweets) March 30, 2022
Shreyas Iyer reveals why Venkatesh Iyer was bowled
Having finished the remarkable spells of his fast-bowling duo of Umesh Yadav (4-0-16-2) and Tim Southee (4-0-20-3) by the end of 18th Over, Iyer opted to go with Venkatesh Iyer ahead of Russell during the 19th, with 17 runs still needed of the final two Overs.
Having not bowled an Over yet in the match, Iyer conceded 10 runs, including a boundary of his final delivery to bring the equation down to 7 off 6.
A discomforted Russell eventually had to bowl the final Over, but it took only two deliveries for Karthik to finish off the proceedings.
Explaining the rationale of handing Venkatesh the penultimate Over, Iyer remarked that the former has a decent experience of bowling at the international level, and that he needs to back his players, especially during the initial part of the tournament.
“At the end, I decided to go with Venky because he has some experience bowling at the international level. Important to give confidence to the players as early as possible,” stated Iyer during the post-match presentation.
