IPL 2019 | Studs and Duds from IPL Week 1

Andre Russell: If I had to pick only one stand-out player from the first week, it would definitely be Andre Russell. Not only because of the number of runs he scored but because of the way he did it. It was clean hitting of a different level. A 19-ball 48 was followed by a 17-ball 47 and even if you decide to discount his bowling and fielding - make no mistake, he is at the top of the pile in the bowling chart - one would be hard-pressed to imagine how he does that so regularly. Luckily for Kolkata Knight Riders, both the innings were the eventual difference in the game and made sure that the team’s home dominance started up in a brilliant fashion.

Nitish Rana: One of the most promising youngsters in the last three years of the Indian Premier League, Nitish Rana made everyone sit up and take notice of him in KKR’s first two matches. While two half-centuries make him stand-out, it was the maturity of Rana’s innings that was the major talking point. With the partisan crowd waiting for the Russell mania to light up the Kolkata sky, Rana took his time, in the company of Robin Uthappa, to get going and played out 21 balls for only 22 runs. But after observing that the wicket was good enough to make typical progress, he upped the ante to collect 41 off the next 13 balls he faced. This was a plan and understanding of the situation that made me believe that the current Orange Cap holder is on a rising plane now. How much he can keep up doing such act is going to be an interesting observation from now onwards.

Rishabh Pant: While talking about whether an innings single-handedly decided the result, THAT Rishabh Pant innings would definitely be brought up time and time again for discussion. It had the thrill, it had the excitement and it had the normal Pant pandemonium that had many stadia on fire in the last couple of years in the IPL. A 27-ball 78 was outrageous any day, but the way he did it put him straight on list of heroes. After playing five straight balls to open the count, Pant walked across the stumps to flick Ben Cutting delivery, which was neither fully short or was on the pads, behind the square. Mumbai still tried to have the game plan intact for the entire duration of the game, with Jasprit Bumrah even changing the angle to round the wicket and despite most of their bowlers targeting the outside off-stump, he ended up scoring 81% of the total runs on the leg-side. Talk about bowler dictating where the field placement should be, and Pant would change the very parameters of it.

KL Rahul: Right head-space is a brilliant asset to have in a high-pressure tournament like IPL and it is clear that KL Rahul doesn’t have one at the moment. After a forgettable season with the Indian team, Rahul thought the IPL would give him a platform to unleash his natural play once again, but his performances in the first two matches were anything but that. That disturbed Kings XI Punjab’s plans for a fair bit as the franchise is heavily reliant on their opener to give them the kind of starts like last year considering the fact that Chris Gayle is mercurial in his approach and doesn’t score runs consistently. Both the matches were on batting-friendly wickets, and had he been on a good mindset, he could have scored some handy amount of runs like the way his teammates did.

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