Lucknow Super Giants and Kolkata Knight Riders play out a heartstopper, Virat Kohli roars back to form in Royal Challengers Bangalore’s most crucial game and an edgy Rishabh Pant leads an error-prone Delhi Capitals out of the tournament.
Here is our wrap from the eighth and final week of the league stage of the Indian Premier League 2022.
Goodbye Mumbai, it’s playoffs time this week in Kolkata and Ahmedabad!
Match of the tournament
Even as Lucknow Super Giants broke one record after the other, it seemed like Kolkata Knight Riders had no way back in a match they had to win to stay in contention for the playoffs.
Quinton de Kock and KL Rahul posted the highest opening stand of the IPL, de Kock made the third highest individual score in the league and LSG became the first team to go through an entire innings batting first without losing a single wicket.
As de Kock blasted off to 140 off 70 deliveries with as many as ten sixes, KKR gritted their teeth and came out to give it everything.
It didn’t matter how many wickets they lost, the incoming batsmen just kept going for the boundaries. Nitish Rana, skipper Shreyas Iyer, Sam Billings, all of them played heroic hands. It was as if LSG’s energies were fully focussed on keeping the always dangerous Andre Russell quiet, which they did manage to very successfully.
But then Rinku Singh and Sunil Narine came up with two absolute blinders at the death, catching LSG by surprise as they relaxed just a bit after Russell’s departure.
LSG had used up their main bowlers and Marcus Stoinis copped a four and two sixes in three successive deliveries in the last over. With KKR on the brink of a scarcely believable win, Evin Lewis tore across from deep point and slid across the DY Patil Stadium grass to grab a slice from Rinku, bringing his team back from the dead.
Stoinis now channelled his inner Brett Lee and Shaun Tait for the last ball of the match, and yorked Umesh Yadav. LSG had escaped near-certain defeat by two runs and KKR’s valiant chase had ended in heartbreak at DY Patil Stadium.
As Iyer summed it up, “That was one of the best games of cricket I have played.”
LSG skipper Rahul, his nerves shredded by the end, quipped, “I should probably get paid more for games like this.”
It was undoubtedly the match of IPL 2022 so far, and Stoinis rightly said that LSG’s Player of the Match was Lewis for that memorable catch.
King Kohli is back
Three golden ducks, several soft dismissals, the entire spectrum of helpless emotion from disappointment to frustration to resignation - we have seen an unrecognisable Virat Kohli in this IPL.
But the original bad boy of west Delhi was back for Royal Challengers Bangalore’s must-win last league match against table toppers Gujarat Titans at Wankhede Stadium - the ultra-confident athlete ready to take on anything and dismiss it out of sight with disdain.
As he did to Mohammed Shami early in the RCB chase, swatting him over his head for a straight four as if he was not one of the world’s foremost fast bowlers, but a trundler who deserved no respect.
The familiar itch for a fight was back, the aggressive stares, the in-your-face walk that dares the opponent to respond, the come-ons for inside-edged boundaries, he even celebrated as Shami slipped the ball down the leg side and past the wicketkeeper for five wides. He was enjoying himself after a summer of false starts and dashed hopes.
Kohli in this mood can deflate the opposition quickly and that is what happened to GT, as his 73 off 54 brought up an easy eight-wicket victory for RCB.
Skipper Faf du Plessis just turned the strike over to Kohli and watched the show from the other end in an opening stand of 115.
“He has got so much emotion and he pulls you through,” du Plessis said about Kohli. “It is as if you are playing a rugby game.”
New Zealander Lockie Ferguson, no stranger to rugby, would have agreed; Kohli had almost walked right up to him after a close single, as if challenging him to a duel.
Delhi crash out on night of errors
Delhi Capitals had to win against Mumbai Indians at Wankhede to pip RCB to the fourth playoff spot.
Right at the toss, there was a brief shower in south Mumbai, the first of the pre-monsoon ones in late May. And it seemed to have poured cold water over DC’s dreams.
Soon, they crumbled to 31 for 3 against the venom of Jasprit Bumrah in the powerplay. Rishabh Pant. Hemmed in by the pressure of the occasion and the scoreboard, was a pale version of himself in a 33-ball 39.
DC needed to take every chance that came their way after setting a target of just 160. And they had their left-arm wrist-spin trump card in Kuldeep Yadav to create opportunities.
He duly did, but Shardul Thakur put down Dewald Brevis at deep midwicket, and Pant then put him down after calling for a top-edge and telling the bowler Kuldeep to stay away from the descending ball.
In a disaster that kept getting worse, Pant did not review a clear edge into his gloves off Tim David’s very first ball from Thakur, even as head coach Ricky Ponting, unable to actually do something about the horrors unfolding on the field, clenched his teeth in the dugout.
Brevis went on to anchor the chase with 37 off 33 and David all but dumped DC out with 34 off 11.
“For most of the game we were on top,” began Pant at the post-match presentation.
“But on occasions, we let the game slip away from our grasp.”
Literally your grasp, skipper.
