KKR vs SRH: After KKR's victory, Rahane praised the bowlers, SRH captain blamed them for the defeat..

In the 15th match of IPL 2025, Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by 80 runs. After this victory, KKR captain Ajinkya Rahane looked very happy. He praised his bowlers fiercely. At the same time, Sunrisers Hyderabad captain Pat Cummins has blamed his fielders for the defeat. He also said that his team could have gone with other options and he would consider it before the next match. Batting first, KKR scored 200 runs for six wickets, and in response, Sunrisers were bowled out for 120 runs.

'Wanted to bowl first, but helplessness...'

After the victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad, Kolkata Knight Riders captain Ajinkya Rahane said that it was very important for his team to win this match and that too by a big margin. Rahane said after the match, 'This match was very important for us. It was important to win and win by a big margin. We wanted to bowl first on this wicket, but after losing the toss we had to bat first.'

'Wanted to play normally for 15 overs'

He said, 'After losing two wickets, there was a discussion on handling the innings so that if wickets are in hand, the batsmen coming after the 11th or 12th over can score runs quickly. We have learned a lot from our mistakes. We will also learn from this match as a batting group. When Rinku and Venkatesh were batting, the target was to score 50 or 60 runs in 30 balls. We wanted to play normally for 15 overs and then open our hands.'

'Rinku and Venkatesh batted well'

He said, 'We thought that a score of 170-180 would be good, but Rinku and Venkatesh took it further.' Praising his bowlers, Rahane said, 'We have three excellent spinners. Unfortunately, Moeen was not there, but Sunny (Sunil Narine) and Varun bowled well. Vaibhav and Harshit also performed well.'

'We did poor fielding and fell behind'

At the same time, after the third consecutive defeat of this season, SRH captain Pat Cummins said that this defeat is not worth digesting and now the players of the team will have to think about it. He said, 'Not a very good time. I think it was a very good wicket. A lot of catches were dropped in the field, there was misfielding and in the end, we fell far behind. We need to be realistic, the results of three consecutive games have not gone in our favor.'

'Could we have chosen better options'

Cummins said, 'We probably need to look back to see if we could have chosen better options. Our batsmen look best when they play aggressive cricket, but looking back, maybe we could have taken different options.' When asked what mistake did the team make? Cummins said, 'It was mainly our fielding. Overall the bowling was not bad. We should have taken some catches and stopped them at a slightly lower score.'

Cummins' statement on Zampa not playing

On Adam Zampa not playing, Cummins said, 'We only bowled three overs of spin. The ball was not gripping for us either. So chose to go without Zampa.' When asked about the future road plan after this defeat, Cummins said, 'I will discuss whether we could have used different options. But do not want to focus too much on it. We will now play the match on the pitch which we now know well.'

What happened in the match?

Talking about the match, Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by 80 runs on Thursday with the help of Venkatesh Iyer's 60 runs in 29 balls. Angkrish Raghuvanshi (50 runs in 32 balls) also hit a fifty and shared an 81-run partnership with captain Ajinkya Rahane (38 runs in 27 balls). Based on this, the host team scored 200 runs for six wickets. In reply, the Sunrisers team was all out for 120 runs in 16.4 overs. Fast bowler Vaibhav Arora dismissed Travis Head (four) and Ishan Kishan (two) in two consecutive overs. He took three wickets for 29 runs in four overs.

When Harshit Rana took the wicket of Abhishek Sharma (two), the score of Sunrisers was three wickets for nine runs in the third over. Andre Russell and Sunil Narine also took one wicket each. Sunrisers had lost five wickets for 66 runs in ten overs. After this, Varun Chakraborty sent back the lower order by taking two wickets within two balls. He took three wickets for 22 runs in four overs. For Hyderabad, Heinrich Klaasen scored the highest 33 runs. Apart from this, Kamindu Mendis played an innings of 27 runs. KKR's next match is against Lucknow Super Giants on Tuesday. Whereas, Sunrisers' next match will be against Gujarat Titans on Sunday.

PC Social media