It's not often that a total of 261 is made to look pedestrian but it has been, by the Punjab Kings as Jonny Bairstow, Shashank Singh and Prabhsimran Singh tore apart the Kolkata Knight Riders' (KKR) attack to pull off the highest ever successful chase in T20 history on Friday, April 16 at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. 262/2 was made in 18.4 overs like it was a walk in the park. If ever there was a statement game or a batting effort to show how far T20 cricket has come, this was it, and a half.
It was a monstrosity of another level when if you think about it, looked like they would have made 300 if they had played all their overs. Who Varun Chakravarthy, who Dushmantha Chameera? What is pressure? Nothing mattered. This was a herculean effort made to look like it's an everyday job like it's routine. First, the Punjab Kings bowlers suffered and then it was time for the Kolkata Knight Riders bowlers to be on the receiving end as small boundaries, fast outfield, unending batting line-ups and absolute road-like surfaces have made 250 a daily occurrence.
It was a mockery of 262 runs, which began in the powerplay with Prabhsimran Singh going hammer and tongs. Prabhsimran took on Chameera, Harshit Rana, Sunil Narine and Anukul Roy all at once. He didn't discriminate as he gave all of them the same treatment. As Bairstow said, they wanted to whack as far as possible and go ballistic from the ball one.
They kept smashing and got the highest score for Punjab Kings in the powerplay in the IPL. A spotless powerplay would have been ideal but the Kings wouldn't mind 93 runs. Rilee Rossouw was slow to get off but he too hit a couple of lusty blows before the redemption man Shashank came to the fore yet again. Shashank seems to be at the peak of his powers currently. Nothing deters the match situation, the bowler, the conditions, and he knows exactly what shot to play, when to play and executed all of it perfectly.
Bairstow meanwhile, crept up on KKR like a worm. The form is nothing in T20 cricket as he admitted, it was his day, the luck went his way and it came off for the Englishman, who slammed his second IPL century and first for the Punjab Kings. Bairstow didn't get the strike for a wee bit during the innings and Punjab needed to maintain the tempo as they were batting at 14/15, making the required rate of 12 look ordinary.
Shashank just kept going and didn't stop and eventually got his fifty off just 23 balls and remained unbeaten on 68 off 28 to take his side through to the victory. This was an important win for the Kings given they have to keep winning to stay alive in the tournament and this was a much-needed reaffirmation after losing four games in a row, and all of them finished in the last over but went against them.
Earlier, it was the duo of Sunil Narine and Phil Salt with the 138-run stand, who got KKR off to yet another powerful start with the bat. Both scored 70-odd as Knight Riders looked on course of yet another huge total and the cameos from Andre Russell, Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer got them to a score of 261, which would be defended on 9/10 days but not on Friday.
KKR are now tied on the number of wins and losses with Sunrisers Hyderabad and Lucknow Super Giants with all three of them having won five and lost three in eight matches.
