Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) all-rounder Andre Russell was in a brutal form last IPL season. In one of the clashes against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), Russell went on to smash 49* runs off just 19 deliveries. His innings helped KKR win the match from a very tough position.
KKR needed 52 runs to win off the last three overs. Russell was in the middle with Shubman Gill to chase down the target as their score read 129/4 in 17 overs.
In the next three overs, KKR scored 19 runs off Siddarth Kaul, 21 off Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and 13 runs in the last over of Shakib Al Hasan. They won the match with two balls left.
In a recent interview, KKR CEO Venky Mysore revealed Russell got emotional after the innings because of crowd reaction on his big hits. “I think it’s safe to say that it’ll be very different. In the IPL, the players will experience no crowds for the first time,” Mysore told Sportskeeda.
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“Last year, we were playing a game against Sunrisers and it was an impossible situation. One of the best death bowlers in Bhuvneshwar Kumar was bowling and he (Andre Russell) went in,” Mysore recalled.
Russell was going after everything and the crowd just made the moment special for him with their reaction. “It was Andre Russell’s day and he took him apart. There was one shot he played to a slowish ball outside off-stump. He could barely reach it but he hit it for six. I asked him after the game what that shot was,” he added.
“He said, ‘Man, I don’t know. When I’m playing like that, the crowd gets me going. After I hit that shot, the way the crowd reacted, I had goosebumps and tears in my eyes’. This is the impact the crowd has on the players,” the KKR CEO further said.
Russell ended the season with 510 runs at an average of 56.66. He scored those runs with a strike-rate of 204.81, which shows the destructive nature of his batting.
This year, IPL's 13th edition will take place in UAE from September 19, as confirmed by Brijesh Patel, who is the chairman of the IPL Governing Council.
