Cricbing

 IPL SCORES 

At the end of four hours and ten minutes, barring the match officials considering the horrifying over-rate, there were plenty of smiles in both camps. Mumbai Indians registered their opening win in IPL 2020, and their first in the United Arab Emirates, while Kolkata Knight Riders were probably happy the ordeal was over. In the last four years, Knight Riders have won just one game against Rohit Sharma's men and have lost nine. From their point of view, it's good that they have one match out of the way against a bogey team early on in the tournament.

By the end of it all, Dinesh Karthik stressed he doesn't want to be too critical of While Knight Riders pacers struggled for height, Mumbai pacers managed to comfortably hit the shoulder height and at pacethe 49-run defeat against Mumbai and rightly so. It was a strange evening for Knight Riders. Promising at first and frightful from thereon. When Shivam Mavi struck in the second over, to remove Quinton de Kock, it seemed they had sorted out their powerplay nightmares. Last season, lack of wickets in the first six overs was a concern as they got just 16 wickets in 14 games in the powerplay.

One of the objectives set by Mahela Jayawardene for the Mumbai batting unit was to hit the 180-run mark. Rohit was going to be crucial with the batting depth compromised a bit and after an early wicket. As Rohit battled nerves, the Knight Riders bowlers forgot the very basics of bowling to the Mumbai captain. In every bowler's meeting, the presentation on Rohit contains a point in bold to avoid bowling short. Instead, Sandeep Warrier served one to the Mumbai captain in the very first over. The short and wide delivery was hit for a six wide of third man. Rohit's next six came only in the fifth over. He had moved to 13 off 13 when he stood tall and whacked a short delivery over the mid-wicket fence. Later in that over, Pat Cummins erred on length once again and was pulled for another six.

Rohit struck six sixes on the night - five of them coming against short or back of length deliveries and none climbing to the shoulder. "I back myself to play that (pull) shot," Rohit said after the game. "I am very confident playing that shot and have practised quite a bit. I am glad that it came out well today and I am happy with the performance.

"It was all nerves to start with because we haven't played much cricket and six months is a long time. I was quite keen to make it count today. It was pretty tough because the heat takes a lot out of the body. Towards the end, I just wanted to stay still and hit. We've seen it in the few games that one set batsman batting till the end and taking the game away from the opposition and that's all I was trying to do."

Cummins, Andre Russell and Kuldeep struggling for execution was pretty understandable though. Russell had bowled just 13 overs in the Caribbean Premier League on low-slow tracks while Cummins was allowed to come out of quarantine only at 4 pm on match day. While it wasn't lack of match time, it was more a case of taking longer to acclimatise to different conditions.