Yusuf Pathan will be the key for Knight Riders in the Play Offs. Image Source: Xtra Time[/caption]Kolkata: Knight Riders booked their place in the Playoffs with a convincing 22 runs win over Sunrisers Hyderabad at Eden Gardens on Sunday. It was the spinners that did the trick for the Knight Riders on the slow wicket at Eden Gardens. The two time former IPL champions will take in a lot of positives from this match.
Mystery spinner Sunil Narine showed signs of coming into form. He ended up taking three wickets against Sunrisers today. The Knights will also take heart out of the fact that Yusuf Pathan is in tremendous form. The senior Pathan collected his third Man of the Match award for his match winning knock of 52 runs off 34 balls that included 3 fours and 2 sixes. According to Pathan, “Inshallah, I am very happy that we have qualified. While I was batting with Manish, we felt 160 will be enough on this wicket as we had three quality spinners in our side.
I would like to thank Manish for taking the charge at the initial stage. That helped me to settle down. I have changed my role this season. I would like to thank Gautam and the team management for giving me an opportunity to bat up the order.”
The Knight Riders captain Gautam Gambhir will be a lot relieved to see his team through to the play offs. Gambhir will remember what happened last season as the Knights failed to qualify for the play offs after losing their last couple of matches to Rajasthan Royals and Mumbai Indians.
According to Gambhir, "It was a very important win. It was a must win game for us. Form is very important. Yusuf is hitting the ball very well. His role has changed. We're giving him more overs. He's matured a lot. He tries to be in good positions. 160 would be a good total on that pitch. Once the ball gets a bit older it's very difficult for the batsmen to take on our spinners. We can take a lot of confidence from this game. When you lose a player like Andre Russell, it's very difficult to get the combinations right, but the guys have put their hands up."
Sunrisers will be ruing the fact that they lost a golden opportunity to end in the top two. Sunrisers captain David Warner blamed his team for not adapting to the conditions."I think the key was taking pace off the ball. We didn't adapt fast enough to conditions. The bowlers were a tad full. We were disappointing with the bat. The death bowling by us was a positive. KKR played well, they always do at home. 170 is chaseable but they've got a quality spin attack. I don't think we rotated the strike as much. We have to adapt wherever we play the next game. We've been playing good cricket and we've still got some momentum," said Warner at the post match.
The Knight Riders owner Shahrukh Khan expressed his emotions on twitter. He thanked the City of Joy , the Eden crowd for showing its support along with CAB president Sourav Ganguly.
The Knight Riders will be buoyed by the news of Andre Russell showing signs of improvement. The Jamaican will be travelling along with the team to Delhi to take part in the Play Offs if he is declared fit. Russell injured his hamstring while bowling in the match against Royal Challengers Bangalore.
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