Varun Chakravarthy of the Kolkata Knight Riders recorded sparkling figures of 1/20 while bowling three of his four overs at the death against the Sunrisers Hyderabad.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) match between Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad on Thursday saw Nitish Rana’s team pull off a sensational win that appeared implausible at one stage in the game. The Sunrisers choked in the run-chase, needing only 38 runs in the final 5 overs, courtesy to a fantastic bowling performance by Varun Chakravarthy. The veteran spinner, who was charged with defending 8 runs in the game’s final over, was duly named Player of the Match.
The Sunrisers needed 9 runs from the final over to win the match, with Abdul Samad and Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the middle. Chakravarthy, on the other side, only gave away 3 runs from 6 balls while also picking off Samad to give the Knight Riders a 5-run win.
“In the last over, my heart rate was over 200, but I wanted them to make it to the longer part of the ground.” The ball was slipping a lot, and my only hope was to gamble on the longer side. “In my first over, I scored 12 runs, Markram hit me for two fours, and that’s how the game goes,” Chakravarthy stated during the award ceremony.
Chakravarthy didn’t only bring the Knight Riders back into the game in the final over. He bowled three overs at the death, the other two being the 16th and 18th overs. Chakravarthy was also difficult to hit in those two overs. The mystery spinner only handed up 9 runs in those two overs, concluding with stats of 1/20 in four overs.
Varun remarked after the game about the changes he’s made to his bowling: “Last year I was bowling around 85kmph, trying out many things, and I realized that I needed to work on my revolutions, and I did work on it.”
Chasing 38 runs off 30 balls wasn’t a difficult task for any side on any given surface. Varun Chakravarthy, on the other hand, literally choked the Sunrisers Hyderabad with his economical three overs in the end.
