Pat Cummins is the world’s best fast bowler according to the ICC Test rankings but if he can bat like this, then he very soon might become the world’s best allrounder too.
Cummins hit an incredible 15-ball 56 as the Kolkata Knight Riders handed the Mumbai Indians a heavy defeat in their match at the Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Pune.
After being put in to bat first, MI struggled to get going thanks to a neat little spell by Umesh Yadav. The pacer got rid of Rohit Sharma early and then kept it tight to the in-form Ishan Kishan too.
After 10 overs, MI had only 54/2 on the board and they badly needed a pick-me-up. They got that from Suryakumar Yadav (52 off 36), who returned to the playing XI after a long injury layoff, and Tilak Varma. The duo put together a vital stand of 83 off just 49 balls.
A nice little cameo by Kieron Pollard, who made 22 runs off 5 balls, to MI to 161/4 and seemed to have given a fighting chance.
And that seemed true for most of the KKR chase. Venkatesh Iyer made a valuable 50 not out off 41 balls to hold the innings together on what seemed like a tricky wicket. The ball was doing something and most batters were never really comfortable in the middle.
We can say most because then Pat Cummins arrived in the middle with KKR five wickets down. Fans would have expected him just turn over the strike to Venkatesh Iyer and stay in the middle for as long as possible.
But Cummins clearly had other plans. He had conceded 49 runs in his four overs and perhaps he just wanted to get the memory of that out of his system.
He started his innings off with a single but then dispatched the second ball for a six and followed it up with the four. Nice hits but the question was whether he could keep it going?
And he sure could. The runs kept flowing and the ball kept disappearing into the stands. What had seemed like a tricky chase at one point simply evaporated into nothingness.
As Venkatesh Iyer later put it, “For everyone other than Pat it (pitch) looked tricky.”
Cummins got to his fifty off just 14 balls, equalling the record held by KL Rahul, and then finished the match off the very next ball with another six. KKR won by 5 wickets with 4 overs to spare.
KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer couldn’t believe what he had seen.
“Extraordinary! I couldn’t believe the way he (Cummins) was hitting the ball,” said Shreyas Iyer in the post-match presentation. “Because yesterday in the nets, he was getting bowled now and then, I was batting in the nets beside him then. During the timeout, the plan was for Venky to drop anchor and tell Pat to just swing at everything because that’s what he was doing before too.”
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