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Ajinkya Rahane scored 50 runs off 36 deliveries, while Venkatesh Iyer couldn’t connect the bat with the ball and departed back to the hut after scoring 14 runs off 19 deliveries.
Andre Russell scored a 15-ball 21 but couldn’t take KKR over the line (Picture credit: AFP)
Former Australia and Kolkata Knight Riders batter Aaron Finch has said that one cannot hit a four or a six if his first intention is to just knock it around and go for a single, taking a massive dig at the KKR batters, who he claims batted with a lack of intent against the Gujarat Titans while chasing 199.
The Ajinkya Rahane-led team fell 39 runs short against Shubman Gill’s men as they couldn’t chase down the 199-run target.
With the difference between required runs and number of balls ever increasing, in the end, the lower order comprising Andre Russell, Rinku and Ramandeep Singh couldn’t do the job.
“You need to have an intent to take spin down. You can’t hit a six or a boundary if you’re not trying to, if your first instinct is to just knock it into the leg side and run one. Then you’re on a hiding to nothing and it was just mesmerising, the lack of intent. They had nine batters in their team,” Finch said while speaking on ESPNCricinfo.
“That automatically tells me they are going to be ultra-aggressive at the start, try to get up to or ahead of the [required] run rate, so that when the wicket deteriorates, there’s room for error,” Finch added.
Kolkata were handed a 39-run defeat by Gujarat at the Eden Gardens on Monday, with captain Ajinkya Rahane’s 36-ball 50 being the sole innings of substance in the steep chase of 199.
Rahane has done the heavy-lifting, and young Angkrish Raghuvanshi has impressed with his fluent strokeplay. Kolkata’s decision to send the latter as low as number nine as an impact substitute raised multiple eyebrows in their game against Gujarat.
The defeat was their second successive loss in IPL 2025, third in the last five games and overall fifth in eight matches.
It has been a season of struggle at home for Kolkata, who have lost three of the four games at the Eden Gardens as well.
Rahane has admitted that his franchise’s struggles at the top of the order in IPL 2025 are proving costly.
