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Jason Roy adds sheen to KKR’s opening gambit
After going through several openers, KKR may have found the right fit in Jason Roy.
Kolkata Knight Riders’ Powerplay scores before their win in Bangalore were 46/3, 47/2, 43/2, 62/3, 57/2, 35/3 and 38/2. But on Wednesday, they finally got their act right and added 66 for the opening stand. Every T20 franchise aspires to plough through the first six overs of field restrictions, ideally without losing any wicket. But KKR looked resigned to the idea of stuttering starts, putting more pressure on their middle order even before the middle overs would start. That seems to have changed since the arrival of Jason Roy.
In Roy and Narayan Jagadeesan, KKR were experimenting with their sixth opening combination in eight innings—the most among all IPL teams this season. Jagadeesan, coming on the back of a prolific domestic season, possibly is being given a long run in the hope of a breakthrough innings. But Roy is a finished product, and more memorably, one half of the opening partnership—with Jonny Bairstow—that had churned four consecutive century stands during England’s 2019 World Cup winning run.
A 39-ball 43 wasn’t exactly the first impression Roy was looking for after being signed by KKR when Shakib Al Hasan chose his country over the franchise. But against Delhi Capitals where the rest of the KKR batting imploded without trying to play out the difficult overs, the English opener at least tried to dig in.
Against Chennai Super Kings, Roy had to come lower down the order after he was injured while fielding. But when he did come out to bat—at No 5 no less—Roy stoked a glimmer of hope, blasting 61 off 26 balls.
Roy isn’t the archetypal English batter—fluent against fast bowling but suspect against spin. In fact, out of the five sixes and five fours Roy had hit against CSK, only one boundary was scored off Matheesha Pathirana, CSK’s newest slog overs wonder pacer.
So when he opened the innings on Wednesday, RCB had no plausible reason to resort to spin any time soon. Roy, however, took the attack to RCB’s pacers, thumping Mohammed Siraj for three boundaries before clipping David Willey for a six over square-leg. When Wanindu Hasaranga checked in, RCB was finally looking to get a measure of Roy after two failed sweeps in the fifth over. The next ball was again tossed up to seek an lbw in the hope that Roy wouldn’t connect his sweep again, but this time he came up with a reverse sweep for a boundary.
Against Shahbaz Ahmed however, Roy really came into his own, levelling his slow left-arm bowling with four sixes. Jagadeesan was scratching around but with Roy plundering 48 runs in 20 balls of the Powerplay, KKR had finally ticked the box they were longing for an eternity. In all, Roy scored 30 off 11 balls from RCB’s spinners at a strike rate of 272, providing the initial impetus and effectively negating the 30-run thrashing meted out to KKR’s pacers in the first two overs of RCB’s innings. In a game where KKR always had the edge because of a better spin attack, Roy’s innings was nothing short of a game-changer.
KKR have always claimed to play a different brand of cricket—relying on a relatively low-profile Indian core while focusing on getting the right combination of bowlers. The slower and more ‘mysterious’ they are, the better for KKR. But in their quest for bowling excellence, KKR have often been accused of missing the big picture in batting. Letting go of Chris Gayle before he became Chris Gayle in the IPL was one such blunder. Robin Uthappa went that way too. Similar feelings must be brewing after releasing Ajinkya Rahane who has undergone a reinvention of sorts at CSK. In the backdrop of these botch-ups has emerged Roy who possesses the kind of bang-for-buck batting any team would crave for. Now that they have it, KKR shouldn’t mind this nice change of pace.
