Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) secured a 10-run victory over Rajasthan Royals (RR) in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 clash on Wednesday in a low-scoring match. Both teams managed to put more than 80 runs on the board in their respective first wicket partnerships, but could still only finish around 150 runs. When asked about the low-scoring match, LSG skipper KL Rahul gave the pitch as the reason. However, former India head coach Ravi Shastri disagrees with the LSG captain’s reasoning.
KL Rahul has received a lot of criticism lately, especially regarding his attack rate in the shortest form of the game. Against Lucknow, he scored a 32-ball 39. After the match, Shastri admitted that Rahul should increase the stroke rate.
“Absolutely (gotta get the slam up). All that talk about 160, I don’t believe it. When you have two chances, if you convert that 39 to 60 or 70, 160 becomes 175. You need someone at the top 3 to keep going and play those long innings,” Ravi Shastri told Star Sports.
“If the Rajasthan Royals team had done that. They would have won this match. There is plenty to learn from this match for both sides about how to approach and take risks at the right time. It is still early in the tournament. Rajasthan is No. 1 and Lucknow is No. 2 and they will learn a lot from this,” he added.
At the end of the match, Rahul said he thought 160 would be a par score on the Jaipur wicket which remained low and not easy to save.
“In the 10 over mark the message me and Kyle sent was that 160 would be a good total on this course, they also have some good bowlers who took advantage of the conditions. We came up 10 short but made up with the ball. And there was no dew there so made it fair for both teams We played here yesterday and saw 180 would be a par score but Boult’s first over, me and Kyle had a chat and realized this isn’t 180 wicket. The ball was a bit low so we gave ourselves time in the power play, maybe if we played a little better we might have had 170 too,” he had said.
Although Lucknow is ranked second in the points table of the IPL 2023, there is still a lot of room for improvement.
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