It was another memorable evening for our Knights as we continued our winning ways, demolishing Delhi Daredevils by 7 wickets at Eden Gardens on Friday (28 April, 2017).
While skipper Gautam Gambhir and Robin Uthappa made light work of a target of 161, it was our bowlers who set up our seventh win in nine games with an astute and near perfect display of death overs bowling.
At the end of 14 overs, the Daredevils were comfortably placed at 2/123, looking set for a total well in excess of 180. However, the pace-duo of Nathan Coulter-Nile and Chris Woakes, ably assisted by the spin-duo of Sunil Narine and Kuldeep Yadav, put up an exceptional show of reverse swing bowling, conceding only 37 runs from the last 36 balls to restrict our opponents to a manageable 6/160.
“Wickets decide the outcome of a game. Today, we showed how good we can be in the death overs. This was the best death overs bowling (this season). If we can recreate these simple things and keep getting better at, we will be an unbeatable team,” said our bowling coach Laxmipathy Balaji during an address to the team in the dressing room after the conclusion of the game.
Our English Knight Woakes may not have picked up any wickets (0/20 from 3 overs) but came good when it mattered, conceding 5 runs in the penultimate over.
“It was important that we came good in the death overs today. They had some players who could hit the ball a long way. The guys kept taking wickets towards the back end, which was really crucial,” commented the seamer while speaking to www.kkr.in after the game.
“We got the ball reversing a little bit, which usually helps to get the yorkers in. That was definitely the case today,” summed up Woakes.
