Kolkata Knight Riders captain Dinesh Karthik refused to accept that asking 19-year-old pacer Shivam Mavi to bowl the final over against Delhi Daredevils on Friday was a mistake despite the youngster conceding 29 runs.
Delhi, after being put in to bat, were on 190/3 in 19 overs when Karthik handed the ball to Mavi, who had figures of 1/29 in three overs till then. The final six balls went like this – six, six, wicket (run out), six, wide, four, six – as Delhi reached 219/4 in 20 overs. This is the highest score in the IPL so far this season.
KKR eventually fell short by as many as 55 runs, managing to score only 164/9 in their 20 overs. However, Karthik refused to blame Mavi. “He is a fast bowler, he is there to do a job,” Karthik said in the post-match press conference. “Who else am I going to give it to? It has to be one of the fast bowlers because it’s hard to give it to a spinner at that stage – the ground is small.”
Karthik added that Mavi had been practising death bowling for KKR and the team needed to trust him. “We need to show faith in him – that’s how he will grow as a cricketer. We don’t need to protect him. At this stage it’s important, even if he gets hit, it’s a learning experience for him. If we start protecting him, he is never going to grow. I’m sure he will learn a lot from this and come back as a better bowler,” he added.
Karthik also backed his decision to bowl first, saying the dew, which generally sets in at the Kotla in the latter stages of the game, did not appear on Friday. “If the dew settles in, chasing becomes easy,” he said. “We believed there would be dew towards the end of the game but today there wasn’t any, so obviously chasing becomes that much more harder. When there is dew it’s far easier to play shots, a lot of mistimed hits go to the boundary, and there’s a lot of pressure on the bowlers.”
DK admitted that KKR “played poorly in all three departments” of the sport. “I’m very disappointed with the result. It literally looks like we did not turn up for the match and that’s very disappointing,” he said. He also credited Delhi for their batting: “They batted really well. They played some really good shots. We could’ve bowled a bit better but a lot of credit goes to the way they batted.”
KKR’s next match is against the Royal Challengers Bangalore on Sunday.
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