Kolkata Knight Riders aim to halt lopsided run versus Mumbai Indians
Kolkata Knight Riders are 0-7 going into their high-profile clash against thrice champions Mumbai Indians on Wednesday.
If T20 is cricket in shorthand and the gap between the good and the not-so-good is closer than in other formats, history between teams shouldn’t really matter. And be it in T20 Internationals or the Indian Premier League (IPL), it usually doesn’t.
Except when Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) meet Mumbai Indians (MI). They have five IPL titles between them but going into Wednesday’s match here the defending champions lead the head-to-head 17-5. The record for the last seven games is 7-0 in favour of MI.
“Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win,” former England skipper Gary Lineker once said. Import that comment into IPL and you could get KKR’s lopsided record against MI. Teams have changed, captains and coaches have come and gone but MI always seem to hit a purple patch against the men in purple. When the opposite happened, in 2012, it got Shah Rukh Khan into trouble at Wankhede.
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Even at the Eden, MI have an enviable record. They have won two IPL titles here, and of the eight league games, MI have won six. That KKR haven’t beaten MI at home since 2015 tells its own story.
It makes KKR doing the double over MI in 2014 seem as much an exception as Nitish Rana dismissing Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers off successive deliveries. All this fits nicely for habitual late starters MI.
It seemed unlikely when Robin Uthappa and Rana were batting on Sunday but the Pandya brothers, Krunal and Hardik, ensured that normal service continued.
“We have got a bit of jinx going on here. The win-loss record isn’t great but it is hard to say why,” said Chris Lynn, who has been a Knight since 2014. That said, the explosive opening batsman knows what KKR have to do.
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“We are going to try and get one back tomorrow night. We definitely owe them one. We could have won the game the other night but we let that one slip. The boys are in good shape and we are looking to bounce back… We can’t take our foot off the throat… If we don’t get the win, we are going to put ourselves under a lot of pressure in the last three games,” he said.
Lynn said his shoulder’s not at 100% but isn’t coming in the way of batting with freedom. “I was a little apprehensive at the start but that’s gone now.” And though there wasn’t any word on the injured Shivam Mavi, the young pace bowler was at the nets on Tuesday.
MI go into this game having won two on the trot for the first time in IPL 11, playing the kind of aggressive cricket JP Duminy said they wanted to. They will take confidence and momentum from that, Duminy said, but it will be a fresh start.
“We can’t be living in past success. We need to understand what challenge is in front of us,” said JP Duminy. KKR should take some solace from that.
