Shreyas Iyer was constructing a brilliant chase. He puts his team in the box seat with his prolific skillset to haul in the target. Even though they had to chase 217, they were right on track with two world-class batters (S Iyer and Nitish Rana) on the crease with 8 more wickets on hand.
Sanju Samson must be cursing with the pressure being built on them. Suddenly, their first hope of ray came in with Nitish Rana’s wicket. Rana already made 13 out of Yuzvendra Chahal’s over and went needlessly to get back to the pavilion. A slow googly was misjudged and slogged hard, fetching the top edge; the ball ended up in Jos Buttler’s hands in the long-on region.
The very next over, the classic Ravichandran Ashwin dismantled the stumps of Andre Russell with a stunner.
The two back-to-back wickets proved as the momentum shifter of this match.
However, Royals’ decision to go on with the pace bowlers in the next two overs backfired. It eventually became just 40 needed off 24 balls; almost throwing Royals at the point of throwing in the towel.
That’s when Chahal was called back to bowl his last over. It was almost KKR’s game with charged-up Shreyas Iyer and sensational Venkatesh Iyer on the crease, 10 runs per over wasn’t a moon landing job by then. But Chahal wasn’t thinking like the rest of the world.
The Chahal’s magic started from the first ball of the over. V Iyer being a lefty, tried to use the leg spinner, danced down the pitch, and missed a well-executed googly. STUMPED. This wicket instantly improved the rhythm of Chahal.
The wicket of Shreyas Iyer in the fourth ball of the over was the masterstroke. For the well-set KKR captain, Chahal and Samson had a different field. Both the skipper and the spinner had a long chat before going on with the plan. There was no square leg and sweeper. Instead, they had a deep point and deep extra covers. And the first ball bowled for this field was a wide well outside off. It was deliberately bowled wide to prepare Shreyas for the offside line. When Shreyas expected a ball outside off, he was trapped by a slow straighter one onto his pads. The bemused Shreyas couldn’t play it across and lost his wicket.
KKR sent Shivam Mavi instead of Pat Cummins to take a sledgehammer approach to do away with the collapse. Unfortunately, Mavi failed in the mission by getting trapped on the tossed-up delivery of Chahal in his first ball.
It was a helter-skelter environment to walk in for Pat Cummins. A slip in place showed a hint of what was coming next. But Cummins wasn’t ready for it. A genuine leg-spin ball right on the good length spot licked the outside edge off Cummins’ blade and settled into Samson’s glove.
The whole stadium erupted with Y Chahal making a unique celebration about the meme on social media about him. Rajasthan Royals’ fans couldn’t have asked for more from this leggie.
KKR was DONE in a single over. Four wickets shipped in an Over isn’t normal; very few bowlers have done that.
The over constructed a lavish castle for RR. In the end, one man and his one good over spun RR to victory.
Another interesting fact is that all four wickets fell in that Chahal’s over were different from each other. He kept trying every trick in the book. Thus the multifarious demand for T20 cricket was finally justified.
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