Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) skipper KL Rahul defended his team's circumspect batting approach in an IPL 2023 match against Rajasthan Royals (RR0, saying he and his opening partner Kyle Mayers realised that the nature of the pitch at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium won’t allow them to target 180.
The visitors posted only 154/7 on the board and still managed to defeat the Royals by 10 runs on Wednesday (April 19).
Rahul played out a maiden over against Trent Boult after RR won the toss and elected to field first. The LSG captain lacked intent in the powerplay and scored 19 off 19 balls. While Rahul eventually perished for 39 off 32 balls, his opening partner Mayers scored 51 off 42 balls as the two put on 82 runs for the opening wicket in 10.4 overs.
However, the Super Giants lost Ayush Badoni (1) and Deepak Hooda (2) cheaply before Nicholas Pooran (29 off 20) and Marcus Stoinis (21 off 16) played handy cameos to make sure they posted a total in excess of 150.
"At the 10-over mark, the message we sent out was that maybe 165 is a good total, so, let us try to get to 160. Did not have to set ourselves very high. They are a quality team, they have good bowlers. We fell 10 runs short maybe but we made it up with the ball in the end. There was no dew and that was fair on both teams," Rahul said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
When asked how he and Mayers were able to read the pitch as early as the first over, the LSG skipper added: "We came in yesterday and we were thinking 180 is a par score. Knowing the batters they have, the mindset was to get 15 runs extra. When Boult bowled the first over, me and Kyle had a chat and we said that the ball was not coming on. We assessed it quite well but if there were a couple more partnerships in the middle, we could have gotten more."
In reply, the hosts got off to a brilliant start as the duo of Yashasvi Jaiswal (44 off 35) and Jos Buttler (40 off 41) added 87 runs for the opening wicket.
Stoinis (2-28) broke the partnership by removing Jaiswal in the 12th over. The southpaw’s dismissal triggered a collapse as RR slipped to 104/4, losing Buttler, Sanju Samson (2) and Shimron Hetmyer (2) in quick succession.
While Devdutt Padikkal (26 off 21) and Riyan Parag (15* off 12) tried to resurrect Rajasthan Royals’ innings, they failed to take the team over the line. Avesh Khan (3-25) defended 19 runs off the last over and restricted RR to 144/6.
"That Samson run out and two wickets falling back-to-back lets you to come back into the game. RR's top three-four are really strong and our plan was to get them out early, and it came via a run-out today," Rahul said.
Lucknow Super Giants will next face Gujarat Titans on April 22.
