Match 30 of the 2022 IPL marked the 14th anniversary of the tournament, and RR and KKR celebrated it by producing one of the best games of this season. After RR scored 217, the highest total of the tournament, KKR responded emphatically before Yuzvendra Chahal’s hat-trick derailed their innings. A valiant inning from Shreyas Iyer was not enough to chase down the record total, which was set up by the second IPL century of the season from Jos Buttler. Let’s look at some of the key points from the game.
Buttler’s Powerplay dominance
Jos Buttler is leading the run-scoring chart by a mile. He has scored 375 runs so far in just six innings, with the next best, Shreyas Iyer, scoring 236 runs in seven innings. With a minimum of 200 runs in this year’s IPL, Buttler’s strike rate of 156.90 is the fourth-best but what is key here is his batting position. The three batters ahead of him are all middle order batters, so for Buttler to strike at this rate and average 75 runs per innings is phenomenal.
Opening the batting in T20s isn’t as easy as it looks. The batter needs to set the right tempo of the innings and also needs to maintain it before the middle order batters and the finishers take over. Buttler’s hefty strike rate isn’t a result of him catching up post Powerplay once he is set. His powerplay returns are staggering.
In this year’s IPL, Buttler’s Powerplay strike rate is 153.1. He has scored 52.27% of his runs (196) in the Powerplay, averaging 98. It wasn’t any different against KKR, as he hit 46 runs in the Powerplay out of the team’s 60 at a strike rate of 170.37. On a flat batting pitch, his inning set the perfect tempo for the rest of the RR batters.
Shreyas Iyer’s off-side game
Shreyas Iyer might not be the best against the short-pitched balls, but he has started to find ways of scoring against that length in his way. In this year’s IPL, Iyer has been seen shuffling across the crease a lot to not only upset the bowler’s rhythm but attack the short-pitched balls as well.
Against RR, Iyer often backed away to give himself room on the off-side to play the cut short and the dab towards the third man. His most productive short in the match was the cut short, which yielded him 21 runs, including three fours. 42.35% of Iyer’s runs (36) came behind the square on the off-side, which shows his unique way of scoring runs against the channel that has often troubled him in the past.
Chahal’s game-changing over
Before Yuzvendra Chahal came on to bowl his final over, he had a mediocre outing, conceding 38 runs off his three overs. He was smashed by Finch in his first over, and Nitish Rana then took him for plenty before getting out on the final ball of Chahal’s third over.
Before Chahal started his fourth over, KKR needed 40 runs off just 24 balls, with captain Shreyas on 85 along with Venkatesh Iyer at the other hand. On a ground with long boundaries, Chahal used his googlies a lot more against the left-handers, which Venkatesh failed to read and got stumped. The most impressive wicket was that of Shreyas, who was fooled by Chahal. RR had set a pack off-side field, which indicated that Chahal will keep it wide of Iyer’s hitting zone, but Chahal bowled a straight quicker one to trap Iyer LBW.
After KKR tried sending multiple batters to shield Pat Cummins from Chahal, he eventually walked out with the leg-spinner on a hat-trick and couldn’t do much against a slow-spinning leg-break that spun away nicely after pitching outside off stump, taking his outside edge.
The game produced the first occurrence of a team’s players registering a century and a five-wicket haul in the same innings of the match. KKR will be thinking hard about how they let the game slip away after dominating a demanding chase for nearly 80% of the innings.