On Friday night, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) suffered a 55-run defeat against the bottom-placed team Delhi Daredevils (DD) at Feroz Shah Kotla (Delhi).

KKR captain Dinesh Karthik decided to field first after winning the toss. After a good opening partnership and new captain Shreyas Iyer’s superb batting performance, the hosts DD managed to put a big total of 219/4 on the board at the end of 20 overs.

Chasing down the target, KKR lost their top-order batsmen quickly as they only managed to score 164/9 in 20 overs.

Now, we will briefly talk about some important reasons for KKR’s defeat in this match.

Shreyas Iyer’s captaincy knock

Shreyas Iyer got the leadership role in a sudden way after former skipper Gautam Gambhir has stepped down from that role on this Wednesday. However, the 23-year old was not looking under pressure in this game and became the main factor of the game.

The in-form right-handed batsman scored another half-century and scored an unbeaten 93 runs off just 40 balls with 3 fours and 10 sixes. Specially after completing his half-century in just 29 balls, he became unstoppable and smashed the KKR bowlers in all places. His knock provided a huge total on the board for the hosts which the visiting team failed to reply.

KKR skipper Dinesh Karthik’s failure to utilise the bowlers well

While KKR skipper Dinesh Karthik had many options, he got confused and failed to utilise the bowlers perfectly in this game. From the beginning of the game, the bowlers got punished and Karthik made changes in bowling line-up but his decisions hardly worked for the team.

Specially, in the death overs as well in the final over, his bowlers conceded huge runs and those became the big turning point of the game.

KKR conceded 76 runs in last 4 overs

KKR bowlers conceded total 76 runs in the last 4 overs. While the hosts were 143/3 at the end of 16 overs, their innings finished on 219/4. Specially, in the final over, KKR young pacer Shivam Mavi conceded total 29 runs with one wide ball. In that over, DD skipper Shreyas Iyer hit him for four sixes and one four.

The death overs proved huge for KKR that they could not provide any further positive fight back in the game.

Top order failures

Chasing down the 220-run target, KKR was once 46/4 in 5.1 overs. Their top-order batsmen fell cheaply and quickly which turned the target out of reach for them.

Despite young Shubman Gill and Andre Russell fought very hard at later, but it was too late as the team even failed to reach the close of the target.

Inability to handle pressure in batting and bowling

From this game, one thing has come out strongly and that is KKR players’ inability to handle the pressure. In both innings, KKR failed to come over from the early pressure. The bowlers leaked runs in the tough and important situations while the batsmen failed to bring out the team from the pressure situation as their works put the team into deep trouble.

Before their next important games, the KKR players need to make improvement hugely in this important part.