IPL 2019
IPL 2019: Jacques Kallis Clarifies About Sunil Narine’s Injury
By CricShots - Mar 26, 2019 6:51 pm
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Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) started their IPL 2019 campaign with a dominating win against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), riding on the back of an immense hitting display by Andre Russell. He played a match-winning knock of 49 runs off just 19 deliveries coming in the slog overs helped KKR chase down the target of 182, and KKR head coach Jacques Kallis was delighted after the performance.

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Sunil Narine

Before the Russell show, Nitish Rana opened the innings with Chris Lynn, in the absence of Sunil Narine which shocked the KKR fans. It was later disclosed that Narine got injured while fielding in the first innings against SRH. Even Rana was unaware of his duties to open after being asked to open the innings with Lynn. 

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However, Russell’s performance made the fans forget Narine’s absence. Describing the same, Russell said, “I have seen him (Russell) go about his business. So as long as he was in there, hitting as well as he was, we were always in with a chance. It needed to be a special knock and it was. I’m happy with the way Gilly (Shubman Gill) played too. He showed a lot of maturity.”

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Nitish Rana

Rana’s score of 68 increased KKR’s chances in the game, talking about the injury of Narine, Kallis said, “I don’t think the injury is too bad. It’s just soft tissue and he is a hard guy, I am sure he will be fine. We will do a few things which are slightly different so that we can keep the opposition guessing. We got some ideas up our sleeves.”

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In spite of mediocre performance by Kolkata’s bowling attack, Kallis reserved some praise for his bowlers, especially IPL debutant Lockie Ferguson. He said that he had confidence in the bowling attack.