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The Australian spearhead, for whom KKR emptied their pockets at the IPL auction to make him the costliest player ever at Rs 24.75 crore, finally did justice to his price tag with a match-winning spell of 4/33 in Kolkata’s 24-run win after putting up a below-par 169 on the board.
Starc’s spell broke the back of Mumbai Indians’ run-chase, which folded up in 18.5 overs at 145 all out. The win is KKR’s first in 12 years at the Wankhede Stadium.
Before Friday, Starc had just seven wickets in 8 matches, and his patchy form was one of the major concerns KKR hoped to fix before the knockout phase of the tournament.
“KKR now looks like a ‘khatarnak’ (dangerous) team after Mitchell Starc’s return to form. They had just one weak link in fast bowling, which was Mitchell Starc’s bowling. The way he bowled to Tim David must be appreciated,” analysed former India pacer Irfan Pathan in a video that was posted on ‘X’ by a user.
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Venkatesh Iyer (70 off 52 balls) was the star with the bat for KKR and put up crucial partnership of 83 runs with Manish Pandey (42 off 31 balls) after MI had the visitors on the ropes at 57/5 in just the seventh over.
Irfan also raised questions on some of the decisions taken on the field by MI captain Hardik Pandya at that stage.
“This (MI) was such a good team on paper but was not managed well. The questions that were being raised about Hardik Pandya’s captaincy were absolutely correct,” said Irfan.
“When you had KKR’s five wickets for just 57 runs, there was no need to give Naman Dhir three overs in a row. You should have got your main bowlers on, but you had your sixth bowler deliver three overs. That allowed Venkatesh Iyer and Manish Pandey to put a partnership together….Where you could have bowled KKR out for 150, they went on to make 170, and that turned out to be the difference,” added Pathan.
The win took KKR to No. 2 on the points table with seven wins in 10 matches, while MI kept languishing at the ninth position on the 10-team table.
KKR are two-time IPL winners, clinching the trophy under Gautam Gambhir’s captaincy in 2012 and 2014. Gambhir is currently the mentor of Kolkata franchise.
