‘We played bad cricket as a batting unit’

It was the Kings’ fourth win in 17 home matches in the last two years. The home side had made a total of 111 runs in 20 overs. Kolkata Knight Riders were once placed at 62 for 2 in 7.3 overs during their run chase but then Rahane fell LBW to a Yuzvendra Chahal delivery and the Knight Riders erred by not taking the review with TV replays showing the impact of the ball outside off stump. Rahane’s dismissal started the slide for Knight Riders as the team lost their next seven wickets for 33 runs. The Kolkata captain talked about not taking the review and the thought behind the decision. “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 non-striker Angkrish 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. 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,” said Rahane.

The captain also talked about the need for the batting unit to have game awareness in the match. With the pitch offering help to spinners, Rahane was of the view that the batsmen needed to grind it out. “It was not a flat wicket. There was something for the bowlers. We had to grind it out. T20, I believe, is not only about hitting sixes. Though we are seeing at this moment that most of the players are going for big shots, they want to look good while batting, it’s not about that. It’s all about reading the situation well. Having that game awareness as a batter, as an individual and then taking the game forward -that’s what I thought we lacked today,” said Rahane.