Cummins stuns Mumbai again as Bumrah’s five-for goes in vain
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) defeated Mumbai Indians (MI) by 52 runs in Match 56 of the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 season at the Dr DY Patil Sports Academy in Navi Mumbai, on Monday.
Chasing a target of 166 runs, MI were bowled out for 113 in 17.3 overs with Pat Cummins taking three wickets for KKR, while Andre Russell took 2 scalps off his bowling. Tim Southee and Varun Chakravarthy ended the evening with a wicket each.
Earlier, KKR posted 165 for nine in 20 overs with Venkatesh Iyer top-scoring with a knock of 43 runs off 24 balls. Jasprit Bumrah was in top form for MI and bagged a five-wicket haul.
Such is the runaway nature of this year’s top four that KKR still need favours from the teams around them to get back into full title contention. But at least, with 10 points now from 12 games, they haven’t been condemned permanently to also-ran status just yet, thanks to a brace of hard-hitting 43s from Venkatesh Iyer and Nitish Rana that proved sufficient to post a passable total of 165 for 9. That score, however, was roughly 30 runs less than might have been anticipated once Bumrah had finished his rampage. In the space of nine balls, he dynamited five wickets for four runs – doubling his tally for the season in the process, having managed just five all told in his first ten outings of Mumbai’s non-starter of a season.
However, that effort was later matched in tag-team fashion by KKR’s own heavyweights, Andre Russell and Pat Cummins. The former was used like a bite of reality with a wicket apiece in each of his first two overs, before he presided over a chaotic denouement in his uncompleted third; the latter purred into the endgame with a burst to rival Bumrah’s intervention – three in his third over as an uncomfortable chase became an impossible one. It’s been that sort of a season for the IPL’s most storied champions.
There are match-ups, and then there are match-ups. Bumrah to Russell, in the 15th over of a well-established first innings, is very much of the latter variety.
Bumrah had bowled a solitary over up until his re-introduction, conceding five runs in the process including a sweetly timed boundary first-ball. He returned with KKR ominously placed on 136 for 3, and with Russell already swinging from the hip with a monstrous second-ball six to his name. What came next was simply dynamite viewing.
Bumrah’s opening gambit was a howling yorker, as pinpoint accurate as such things are possible to be. Russell did exceptionally to dig it out from under his toes with the straightest blade of his career. But it was just a one-ball reprieve. Bumrah went hard into the pitch next ball, luring a wild swipe across the line as Kieron Pollard steadied himself to swallow a vital chance at long-on.
Cheif scores:
Kolkata Knight Riders: 165/9 in 20 overs (Venkatesh Iyer 43, Nitish Rana 43; Jasprit Bumrah 5/10).
Mumbai Indians: 113 all out in 17.3 overs (Ishan Kishan 51; Pat Cummins 3/22) (Agencies)