Kolkata Knight Riders captain Gautam Gambhir on Wednesday credited his bowling unit for setting up the game for his side in the IPL Eliminator against defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad, here.
Two-time champions KKR defeated title holders Sunrisers by seven wickets in a rain-truncated match to enter the Qualifier 2 of IPL.
Opting to bowl first, KKR produced a disciplined bowling and fielding effort to first restrict Sunrisers to a modest 128 for seven and then overwhelmed the revised target of 48 in six overs with consummate ease.
“A lot of credit to the bowlers. They set the game up for us,” Gambhir said at the post-match presentation ceremony.
“The bowlers restricting the Sunrisers batting to 128 was brilliant. There has been times when we’ve lacked intensity. And every run we stop on the field is one less to score and all 11 players were up for that,” he said.
He, however was little disappointed with the batting effort while chasing the paltry revised target.
“We should have been more sensible with the batting, though,” Gambhir said.
“It was a much better wicket than we played RCB on. It was coming onto the bat nicely in our innings. I think if you target 160 you will get a good score. You can’t just go on looking for 200 every game.”
Sunrisers skipper David Warner feels they were 30 runs short of what would have been a defendable score on this wicket.
“We were 30 runs short. It was quite a tough wicket to bat on. The ball was holding up a bit. It’s been quite a disappointing wicket all season. And they bowled really well on it,” said Warner.
“The way we batted wasn’t good enough and six over games can be niggly. We had to come out with positive intent, got three wickets, but we knew they would come hard and it happened. We were good, as we were last time,” he added.
