Kolkata Knight Riders pacer Mitchell Starc bought for INR 24.75 crore in the auction, received a brutal bashing as he came up against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Saturday in his team’s IPL 2024 opener at Eden Gardens, Kolkata.
KKR had batted first after losing the toss and thanks to 54 from Phil Salt and some late overs assault by Andre Russell (64*), Ramandeep Singh (35), and Rinku Singh (23), posted 208/7 in 20 overs.
In response, Mayank Agarwal and Abhishek Sharma scored 32 runs each to give SRH a good start. But it was Heinrich Klaasen, who smashed 63 in 29 balls to bring SRH very close to the target. Eventually, SRH fell 4 runs short, finishing on 204/7 in 20 overs.
However, the focus was on Mitchell Starc, who made his KKR debut and was smashed to all parts of the Eden Garden. In his return to IPL after 9 years, the Australian pacer went for 53 runs in 4 overs and was hit for 4 sixes and 3 fours.
Only Varun Chakravarthy, 55 runs in 4 overs for 1 wicket, suffered a bigger bashing than Starc in the match. Asked to bowl the 19th over by KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer, Starc ended up leaking 26 runs, with Heinrich Klaasen and Shahbaz Ahmed taking the left-arm pacer to the cleaners.
However, Starc came in for some special bashing on social media, given that KKR had paid INR 24.75 Cr for him in the IPL 2024 auction.
Fans on social media platform X didn't hesitate in brutally trolling Starc, questioning whether he was justifying being paid the record amount in IPL.
Here are some of the best posts:
