Stroke-making has been difficult on the black soil pitch whenever a match has been played on it. And it was no exception when Lucknow came up against star-studded Royal Challengers Bangalore
Ravi Bishnoi of LSG celebrates the wicket of RCB’s Glenn Maxwell in Lucknow yesterday. Pic/PTI
The moment Lucknow Super Giants decided to use the same pitch on which they had failed to chase down 135 against Gujarat Titans last week, a low-scoring game was a given.
Stroke-making has been difficult on the black soil pitch whenever a match has been played on it. And it was no exception when Lucknow came up against star-studded Royal Challengers Bangalore.
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RCB struggled to post 126-9 after opting to bat and it needs to be seen if the home team would be able to overhaul the target. If at all RCB were able to reach a so-called respectable total, they owed it to fit-again captain Faf du Plessis who made 44 from 40 balls, and fellow opener Virat Kohli who collected a quick 31 from 30 balls. The rest of the batters just struggled to time their strokes on the slow track.
Focus on Kohli
The focus of the match was Kohli who was playing his first game at the Ekana Stadium in any format. Thus, there was eagerness among the Lucknow fans, many of them wearing the RCB jersey, to see the star batsman in action. There was also great expectations as Kohli, playing his 232nd IPL match, was on the verge of becoming the first player to notch up 7,000 runs in IPL history.
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Before the match, he was 43 runs short of the landmark, which was not beyond him as he has been in good form this season. He had notched up five half-centuries in eight games and another one looked on the cards from the way he began stroking the ball fluently. But on the slow pitch, he was flummoxed by leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi and was stumped much to the disappointment of the cheering fans. He fell 12 runs short of the 7,000-run mark and also missed out on his 50th fifty in the IPL. There is little doubt that he will achieve both targets in the upcoming matches.
Spinners keep batsmen quiet
As expected, the spinners played a major role in keeping the batsmen quiet, but the pick of the bowlers was pacer Naveen-ul-Haq who used the slower ball to good effect and grabbed three for 30 while there were two wickets each for leg-spinners Bishnoi and Amit Sharma and one for off-spinner Krish Gowtham.
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