The 34th match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 season belonged to the skipper of Lucknow Super Giants, KL Rahul. Rahul played an outstanding knock of 82 runs off 53 balls to steer Lucknow past Chennai Super Kings' total of 176 and helped them break a two-match losing streak.
His knock comprised nine fours and three maximums and came at a strike rate of 154.71 which allowed Lucknow to keep up with the asking run rate right from the outset. The LSG skipper also donned the wicketkeeping duties for the franchise on Friday and grabbed two catches to help his bowlers get rid of his counterpart Ruturaj Gaikwad and the in-form Shivam Dube.
Notably, Rahul's fifty was his 25th fifty-plus score in IPL history and helped him become the player with the most fifty-plus scores in the cash-rich league as a designated wicketkeeper-batter.
Rahul has surpassed the former Chennai Super Kings captain MS Dhoni, who held the record previously with 24 fifty-plus scores as a designated wicketkeeper-batter.
Rahul was delighted with the win and revealed that the strategy that they had put in place for the CSK batters bore fruit.
"Feels good at the end of the day, When you win, looks like you make all the decisions right," Rahul said during the post-match presentation.
"Impossible to get all right. Depends on the kind of wicket we are playing on and the kind of batters there are. We spend time doing homework on tactics and strategy and we spoke about them not settling against one style of bowling. We worked really hard at training, good to see the team sticking to that."
Rahul also revealed that they wanted to restrict CSK to something around 160-165 but a late cameo from Dhoni took the visitors beyond it.
"Halfway stage, I would have happy with 160. Felt the wicket was slow, a bit of grip but not too much. 160-165 would have been ideal. But MSD walks in and the bowlers feel intimidated. He walks in and bowlers were under pressure, the crowd was really loud, he has done it in the past," he added.
Rahul mentioned that LSG planned to take the CSK spinners on and the execution helped.
"Felt that if we bat well, we could chase it down. I have been trying to assess the situation and today it came off. With Chennai's spinners, they tried to put brakes on us. We tried to get to a good start. Tried to take them down, luckily it came off. When your partnership goes on, you can take a few more chances. Glad that it happened," he concluded.
