IPL 2019 | It was not Mujeeb Ur Rahman’s day, says KL Rahul
KL Rahul has stated that it was not Mujeeb Ur Rahman’s day, referring to his figures of 0/66 in the encounter between Kings XI Punjab and Sunrisers Hyderabad on Monday. The Afghan leg-spinner is having a tough time in this season of Indian Premier League with just three wickets in five games.
In Monday’s encounter, Kings XI Punjab had won the toss and put Sunrisers Hyderabad to bat but things did not turn out well for KXIP as they gave away 77 runs in the powerplay itself. Mujeeb Ur Rahman had given 28 runs in two overs until then. The leggie did not return until the 14th over, where he leaked another 12 runs, followed by 26 in the 18th over. Nevertheless, the pacers made a comeback of sorts by restricting the Sunrisers to 212. KL Rahul refused to be too harsh on the youngster saying that it was just not the Afghan’s day.
“Obviously if anybody goes for this many runs, that individual will be disappointed. No bowler wants to come here and give runs and no batsmen want to give away his wicket. It’s just that sometimes in T20 cricket it’s not your day. Even the best of the bowlers can go for runs. Today was the first day when he went for that many runs, other than that he has done extremely well for us,” he said at the post-match press conference, reported Quint.
Similar to the previous games, the Ravichandran Ashwin led team did not possess a sixth bowling option in the playing XI despite the presence of an all-rounder like Sam Curran. However, the India batsman came to his skipper’s defence by citing the injury concerns of all-rounders, referring to Moises Henriques.
“When you are playing with only 5 bowlers, you have to bowl him. There are few injuries in the team so that doesn’t allow us to play an all-rounder. So when you play five full time bowlers, you expect them deliver but sometimes that doesn’t happen and you move on,” the 27-year-old explained.
Rahul even went to say that they were expecting a target in excess of 230, post the aggressive start by David Warner and Wriddhiman Saha. However, the wickets of key batsmen in the death overs ensured that SRH ended up at 212 runs. The World Cup bound batsman, who scored 79 runs in 56 balls, rued the lack of partnerships which ended their chase at just 167.
“Look, 200 plus scores have become pretty common in T20 games so it was definitely chaseable. But with the kind of start they got, i thought we would be chasing around 230-240. But we still pulled things back nicely in the middle phase and obviously if we stitched a few more partnerships early on, 200 wasn’t far away,” he asserted.
Chris Gayle was dismissed for just four runs in the third over, followed by Mayank Agarwal's wicket for 27 in the ninth over. Rahul had only scored 39 off 36 until the 13th over which put the other batsmen under tremendous pressure. As a result, none of the other batsmen crossed the 30 run mark. The wicket-keeper batsman justified his innings by maintaining that his plan was to accelerate later in the end.
“The plan is always for me or Chris to bat as deep as possible, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t play your shots. I tried to hit a few shots but some didn’t come off, some went for the boundary, and some to the fielders. You can’t always get to an amazing start, but once you are set, you need to make that count. I know if i take my time, i can make it up later,” he signed off.
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