Phil Salt and Mitchell Starc Shine in KKR’s Dominant Victory Over LSG In IPL 2024
Phil Salt and Mitchell Starc delivered a memorable performance for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) as they secured a resounding victory over Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in an IPL match at Eden Gardens.
As usual, the KKR spinners shut off the opposition hitters, making the run scoring anything but difficult.
Lucknow Super Giants 161 for 7 (Pooran 45, Rahul 39, Starc 3-28) were defeated by Kolkata Knight Riders 162 for 2 (Salt 89*, Shreyas 38*, Mohsin 2-29) by eight wickets.
The Kolkata Knight Riders gave the fans at Eden Gardens a Bengali New Year to remember on Sunday when they defeated the Lucknow Super Giants by eight wickets. This was made possible by Phil Salt and Mitchell Starc. With his season-best 3 for 28, Starc secured significant LSG wickets, and Salt spearheaded the chase with an undefeated 47-ball 89. KKR has started a run of five straight home games in spectacular form, as they currently sit second on the points table.
Because of the middle overs efforts of their spinners, KKR was also left chasing a manageable goal; they kept LSG at bay even though they had wickets in hand. Varun Chakravarthy claimed one for thirty, while Sunil Narine took one for seventeen in four. Their eight overs went for a total of just 5.88 apiece.
Regarding LSG, Mohsin Khan and Nicholas Pooran offered two bright spots. With two fours and four sixes off his 32-ball 45 at No. 6, Pooran gave LSG a competitive total. Mohsin took the only two wickets for KKR, both in the powerplay.
KKR Bowlers Resricted LSG
In order to get another wicket in the midday heat, Shreyas gave Starc a third powerplay over following Vaibhav Arora’s early strike to dismiss Quinton de Kock. When Deepak Hooda, who was not playing well, cut him to backward point in the fifth over, he did just that.
After that, Rahul and No. 4 Ayush Badoni combined to get LSG to 72 for 2 in ten overs; however, Rahul was dismissed for trying to increase his scoring rate. In the eleventh over, Rahul hit Andre Russell for six, but he was caught for 39 at deep midwicket while trying to repeat the stroke. Marcus Stoinis was called on as a result, but Varun tricked him into inside-edging a catch to the off-side, which wicketkeeper Salt skillfully recovered. As a result, his stay was brief.
With 14 overs remaining and 109 for 4, LSG was in danger of finishing significantly below par. When Badoni top-edged Narine in the fifteenth over for a laborious 27-ball 29, the situation worsened. Narine concluded with a 1 for 17, refusing to give up.
However, LSG still had optimism as long as Pooran was there, and he provided it with his 32-ball 45. In the last overs, he took on the inexperienced Harshit Rana and Arora, assisting LSG in scoring 29 runs off the 18th and 19th overs. But in the 20th over, when he had Pooran nicking behind from the first ball, Starc prevented more harm.
This made sure that LSG could only muster 52 runs in the last six overs, and Starc capped off his comeback with a third wicket on the last delivery of the innings.
Phil Salt Mastered The Chase
After the match, KL Rahul called the loss a “proper hammering” and attributed it primarily to Salt. Salt clipped rookie Shamar Joseph to short-fine leg, very immediately after being dismissed for a duck in KKR’s previous game in Chennai. Salt was lucky to be dropped by Yash Thakur, although he would have still been spared by Joseph’s front-foot no-ball.
Following that let-off, Salt hit a six down the ground to end the first over and kept going hard on the powerplay.That prevented Sunil Narine and Angkrish Raghuvanshi from falling cheaply and helped KKR stay on course. In the third over, he hit three consecutive boundaries off Krunal Pandya, which set up a 58-run powerplay.
In the seventh over on 31, Salt was dropped again at deep-square leg, which may have caused him to become cautious for a few overs. However, Salt gained momentum once more in the tenth over, which was bowled by Arshad Khan (who paid a heavy price for dropping him three overs earlier). Salt reached his fifty in twenty-six balls and took KKR to a century in ten overs with back-to-back fours in the tenth over.
After hitting Thakur for three fours in the fourteenth over and a huge six over midwicket off Mohsin in the fifteenth, Salt started to put the final touches on the innings. The KKR batting innings and the LSG bowling effort were summed up by his four-wicked blow in the sixteenth over off a half-tracker from Bishnoi.
Shreyas Iyer, on the other hand, overcame a sluggish start to go undefeated for the second time this season. With Salt accumulating runs at a fast pace and taking two early wickets, he did not need to take any chances.
He only used forceful shots when the target drew nearer. Through the middle overs, he hit boundaries off of Ravi Bishnoi and Arshad, going from 6 off 12 to 38 off 38 without losing. He was especially effective from his hips since the LSG pacers made a mistake by bowling too frequently on a leg-stump line. He and Salt had the greatest third-wicket stand for KKR in the IPL with their unbroken partnership of 120.
Starc Found His Rythm Before T20 World Cup
“Getting acclimated to the tactical aspect of it is more important. The past several years, I haven’t played a lot of T20 cricket.”
Through four IPL matches this season, Mitchell Starc had taken just two wickets as of Sunday evening, averaging 77 with an economy rate of 11. That happened after he earned INR 24.75 crore in pay during the most recent auction, making him the most expensive player in IPL history. However, Starc reversed course against the Lucknow Super Giants at Eden Gardens, going 3 for 28, and the Kolkata Knight Riders went on to win by eight wickets after dominating the 162 chase.
“I don’t read anything, so that doesn’t bother me,” he remarked in response to the hoopla and expectations surrounding him following the game.
Before traveling to India for the current season, Starc has only participated in two Twenty20 matches in the year and a half since the T20 World Cup in 2022. This year, he made his IPL comeback for the first time since 2015. Starc acknowledged that the “tactical side” of the shortest format was still something he was getting used to.
“It’s T20 cricket; for the guys who have played a lot of Test cricket, this is definitely a lot easier physically,” he stated. “Getting acclimated to the tactical aspect of it is more important. It has maybe taken me a little longer than I would have liked to get back into the swing of things and have a greater impact because I haven’t played a lot of T20 cricket in the past few years. Thus, in that sense, today was pleasant.”
Starc bowled three overs during the powerplay against LSG and gave up 23 after being struck for four fours. However, that spell also resulted in eight dots and Deepak Hooda’s wicket. Returning to bowl the final over, Starc struck twice and gave up just six runs. Nicholas Pooran, the best batter for LSG this season, was hit for 45 on the opening ball he faced. And he thoroughly cleaned up Arshad Khan with a backswing one on the final ball.
On May 26, in Chennai, the next T20 World Cup kicks off just six days after the IPL concludes. As each club travels the nation playing 14 league matches in the IPL, Starc noted that the fast-paced nature of the games is “a feature of T20 cricket” and that he can manage his workload despite the World Cup approaching.
“I’m 34, so I’m pretty good with my workloads” , he stated. This is something I’ve been doing for a while. Tuesday is our next game, and I believe that’s a characteristic of T20 cricket. Games come around so fast, regardless of how your day went, that you can’t truly reflect on the past; instead, you immediately concentrate on the next one.”
