Former Indian cricketer, Wasim Jaffer, pointed out a few surprising captaincy errors during the 6th match of the ongoing IPL 2022 between Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on March 30 (Wednesday) at Dr. DY Patil Stadium, Navi Mumbai.
It was a low-scoring affair, but the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) managed to take the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) into the final over, and, eventually, the enthralling contest was won by RCB by three wickets against the Shreyas Iyer-led KKR on Wednesday.
Jaffer believes that Iyer made a few captaincy errors while defending a paltry 128 runs against the RCB. He was particularly unhappy with the KKR skipper for not handing the ball to Nitish Rana when Varun Chakravarthy was struggling against David Willey, Shahbaz Ahmed, and Sherfane Rutherford.
Speaking on ESPNCricinfo after the enthralling match, Jaffer said: “I was surprised that Shreyas Iyer did not bowl Nitish Rana when there were two left-handers there and Chakravarthy was clearly struggling against them. One or two overs from Rana would have meant that Russell wouldn't have had to bowl. He could have bowled Venkatesh Iyer earlier if Russell was struggling.”
He added, “Things could have been a little bit different if he had saved Chakravathy's over there and used it for right-handers. Umesh Yadav and Tim Southee made a match out of it by getting RCB 17/3 in the powerplay. KKR would have had a better chance if Chakravarthy had bowled better.”
Chakravarthy conceded 33 runs in 4 overs while only picking up 1 wicket against the RCB and the cricket pundit Jaffer suggested that the mystery spinner should avoid giving ample air to the ball, as he struggles a bit while facing left-handers.
He concluded, “It feels like Varun Chakravarthy struggles a bit bowling to the left-handers. He started bowling from around the stumps and then came over the wicket, but his length was on the shorter side. It helped the batters to pull him. He was probably scared to throw the ball in the air or in front of the batters. Had he gone for 20-25 runs or had taken a wicket at that stage, it would have been interesting.”
(With ESPNCricinfo Inputs)
