The first ball of the seventeenth over on Sunday at the Wankhede Stadium. Kieron Pollard slices a cut and holes out. It’s a huge wicket. A big wicket. When he played against the Kolkata Knight Riders in 2016 at the same venue, he clobbered six sixes in a 24-ball 51 to take Mumbai home to a target of 175.
The target was almost similar on Sunday. It was 179. Pollard’s wicket meant Mumbai needed 60 off 23 balls with a required run rate over 16. Mumbai Indians were five down. Surely, Kolkata Knight Riders could win and break Mumbai’s jinx over them (played 6, lost 5) at this venue.
No, they couldn’t. Nitesh Rana and Hardik Pandya combined and went hell for leather. No Pollard, no problem, they seemed to say as they clobbered sixes and fours at will to ultimately give Mumbai a victory no one expected.
Just how did Kolkata gift away a certain victory?
In three words: Pathetic bowling at the death.
Full toss after full toss
For evidence, look at the 19th over. The first mistake KKR made and it was a captaincy call, was giving the inexperienced Ankit Rajpoot, playing only his seventh IPL match and first for Kolkata, the 19th over. Sure, he had taken two wickets previously, but in the cauldron that is the Wankhede and in a venue where dew is around, it requires a player with a lot of experience to handle the pressure.
Rajpoot didn’t. He got the wicket of Rana in the over, but otherwise delivered full-toss after full-toss. Rana slammed him for a six and a four off the first two balls and then Pandya clobbered him for a six off another full-toss off the last ball of the over. Mumbai needed 30 off 12 before the over started. When it ended, they needed 11 off 6 balls.
“It looked like we were going to win this,” said an obviously disappointed Manish Pandey who had starred with the bat with a 47-ball 81 in KKR’s innings, in the post-match press conference. “But Hardik and Rana played really well.”
Trent Boult was a little better but even he couldn’t stop himself from bowling a full-toss in the second ball of the over which Pandya gleefully smashed away for four.
While Pandey did say that dew played a role, he mentioned the failure of Kolkata’s death bowling plenty of times in the presser.
“Even in the first game, we struggled a little with the death bowling. We can actually improve a little more here. It’s two games in a row now, I think it’s high time we start thinking and have some mind and thought [towards this problem] in the meetings as well,” said Pandey.
But Pandey could have said something else as well. That Kolkata could still have won. Had it not been for their abysmal fielding.
Poor fielding
Suryakumar Yadav is a former captain of Mumbai’s Ranji team. Misfields from him are not expected. A misfield for four when the opposition needs 9 to win off 5 is criminal. But that’s what he did. Let a routine ball go through his legs and concede the boundary.
It got even worse. Pandya was then dropped. This time, it was Rishi Dhawan, substituting for Gautam Gambhir. Five was needed off three and KKR could still have won. Boult forced Pandya on the back-off and got the top-edge. Dhawan got underneath, lost his footing completely and shelled it.
In fact, Kolkata’s fielding was consistently bad throughout the Mumbai innings. They fumbled, they made overthrows, they failed to take run-out opportunities. Sure, the dew played a part but it’s not a new factor. Any side, international or domestic, which comes to Mumbai knows about the dew factor. That’s just how it rolls here.
That was a problem with KKR last season and it’s a problem now as well. When they win, they win in style... with panache. But when things become tough, they often throw in the towel too easily. Unfortunately for Gambhir and the rest of the Kolkata Knight Riders, that’s not how you win a third title.