He scored a run-a-ball 17 last night.
The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) captain Ajinkya Rahane revealed that there was turmoil regarding his dismissal between the youngster Angkrish Raghuvanshi and himself, against Punjab Kings (PBKS) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025. In the fourth ball of the 8th over, he missed the slog sweep to Yuzvendra Chahal and the ball hit him on the pad.
The 20-year-old, from the non-striker end, couldn’t help him decide whether to review the umpire’s decision of out or not. The KKR skipper chose to save the DRS for the upcoming batters.
“As a batter, I thought that I could save the review for later. It shouldn’t happen that I take a review and lose it, then we are only left with one review. The communication between the two batsmen [him and Raghuvanshi] wasn’t that clear. If someone clearly tells you that the impact can be out or it can miss, you take a review as a batter,” he said in the post-match press conference.
Rahane attributed Raghuvanshi’s confusion to his loss of wicket. However, the KKR captain refused to complain about it and acknowledged their poor batting performance as the main reason behind their embarrassing loss against Punjab.
“But generally, the batsmen in front of you, you think about what they say. The communication wasn’t that clear: ‘Maybe it could be the umpire’s call, maybe it could be hitting.’ That’s why I didn’t take a review. But again, no complaints. Apart from that, we also were pretty bad as a batting unit. And that was the reason we lost today,” he stated.
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The defending champions started off the match brilliantly. After winning the toss in Mullanpur, KKR’s former title-winning skipper Shreyas Iyer, who is leading the PBKS this season, opted to bat first. But a collective effort from the KKR bowlers bundled out them for just 111 runs in 15.3 overs. Harshit Rana scalped three wickets while the spin duo of Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine bagged two each. Vaibhav Arora and Anrich Nortje took one apiece.
However, the easy chase proved to be much harder for the Knights. The pair of Rahane and Raghuvanshi had built a small partnership after two quick wickets of Narine and Quinton de Kock in the initial stage. But the KKR suffered a collapse in their batting lineup after skipper Rahane’s dismissal.
The middle-order batters including Venkatesh Iyer, Ramandeep Singh, Rinku Singh and Andre Russell failed to put on a fight in a low-scoring thriller. Though Russell hit two sixes and a boundary to Chahal in the 14th over, he couldn’t take his team over the line. Marco Jansen bowled him over when KKR needed just 17 runs from 30 balls.
The previous edition winners have managed to win alternate matches so far in this IPL 2025. With four losses and three wins, they are currently in sixth position in the points table. The Men in Purple will play against Gujarat Titans at the Eden Gardens on April 21.
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