Twitter reacts to Rahul and Agarwal running four despite hobbling Andre Russell failing to stop the ball

Seeing an opening pairing like Chris Lynn and Sunil Narine going bonkers in the powerplay invokes frenzy, but there is something seraphic about watching an orthdox duo like Mayank Agarwal and KL Rahul get their runs in a conventional manner. Opening the batting together in IPL for the first time, the Karnataka duo have been exceptional all season and they have got their runs almost effortlessly. 

True, there have been question marks, at times, surrounding Rahul’s strike rate, due to Agarwal being the aggressor in the partnership, but their consistency is second to none and through that, they’ve ensured that KXIP, despite being bottom, have remained one of the best batting sides in the tournament. 

The duo’s ‘risk management’ has been super-efficient, but in a passage of play versus KKR today, Rahul and Agarwal, even by their own standards, took the ‘caution’ factor to a whole new level. 

On the 2nd ball of the 13th over, with KXIP 98/0 chasing 165, Pat Cummins, bowling his final over, pitched up a full delivery outside off-stump to Rahul, who was batting on 48. The orange-cap holder handsomely drove the ball past the mid-off fielder, and giving chase to it was Andre Russell, who was carrying an injury. The ball was always going to win against a hobbling Russell, and to the naked eye, it did seem like the white cherry touched the boundary ropes; even Russell, of all people, gave up. 

However, in what was a bizarre chain of events, as Russell jumped over to the other side of the advertisement hoardings, Rahul and Agarwal, interestingly, decided to run four, despite the fielder conceding a boundary. The duo took off and ran four runs and were willing to take no risks as they ensured that the team got four runs. 

Rahul and Agarwal took ‘playing it safe’ to a whole new level, but honestly, after the whole ‘one short’ fiasco, could you blame them?