The Indian cricketer Shardul Thakur is called Lord for a reason, despite not being able to generate huge pace or produce lethal Yorkers. He has the ability of taking wickets at crucial times and he can also score some valuable runs lower down the order when his team needs them the most.
Many Indian cricket lovers call him Lord Shardul Thakur because of his performances in the recent past and in yesterday’s IPL match, he played a blistering knock of 68 runs (29 balls, 9 fours & 3 sixes) for his team Kolkata Knight Riders. KKR played the match against Royal Challengers Bangalore in front of its home crowd at Eden Gardens, Kolkata.
The toss was won by RCB and it chose to bowl first, the decision was proven correct initially as the impact player Venkatesh Iyer was dismissed at the score of 3, Mandeep Singh got out for golden duck and the skipper Nitish Rana was dismissed at the score of 1. Though the KKR opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz played a brilliant knock of 57 runs (44 balls, 6 fours & 3 sixes), things turned ugly for KKR when RCB bowler Karn Sharma dismissed Rahmanullah and Andre Russell on consecutive deliveries in the 12th over of the innings.
KKR was struggling at the score of 89/5 at that time and RCB must have thought of completing the KKR innings early and chase the target fast as well in order to maintain a good run rate. But unfortunately for RCB, the successive dismissals brought Shardul Thakur on the crease and he ripped apart the RCB bowlers as he completed his half-century in just 20 balls. Shardul Thakur batted at the strike rate of 234.48 and helped his team in posting a total of 204/7 in the stipulated 20 overs.
On the other hand, RCB batters were completely helpless against the spin trio of Varun Chakaravarthy (4/15), Sunil Narine (2/16) and young Indian spinner Suyash Sharma (3/30) and the whole team got out for 123 runs so KKR registered a huge win by 81 runs.
Shardul Thakur was adjudged as the Player of the Match and in the post-match presentation when he was asked about his knock, he said that he didn’t even know from where his knock came but everyone would have thought that his team was struggling after looking at their score.
Shardul Thakur talked about the contribution made by the coaching staff as he said that they do the throwdowns and also provide the cricketers with the option of range-hitting. He further says that the subconscious mind takes the control when you have to bat like this and undoubtedly a cricketer needs to have these skills at such a higher level but they also work very hard during the net sessions. He adds that the pitches are also very supportive to the batters; he praised the KKR spinners as well and called the day as a perfect one for his team.
KKR will play its next match against the defending champions Gujarat Titans on 9 April at Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad.