Suyash Sharma has joined the spin bowling unit of Kolkata Knight Riders, which already has two mystery spinners in Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine.
With his three-wicket haul on IPL debut, the 19-year-old Delhi spinner shook up the star-studded Royal Challengers Bangalore’s batting line-up. At the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Thursday night, he picked up the wickets of tailenders Karn Sharma, Anuj Rawat and pinch-hitter Dinesh Karthik to help KKR beat Faf du Plessis’s side by 81 runs.
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Suyash Sharma was bought by KKR for Rs 20 lakh in the mini auction held in December last year. After replacing Venkatesh Iyer, he was brought in as an impact player but was left out of the starting lineup.
Suyash hasn’t featured in any List A, FC or T20 matches before the tie against RCB, which is interesting.
A dashing spinner for KKR, Suyash impressed KKR coach Chandrakant Pandit with his “fighting attitude”, saying it was very challenging for the opposition batsmen to pick the leg-spinner.
Chandrakant Pandit said
After the match, Chandrakant Pandit said, “We have seen him (Suyash) in trial matches. He is very quick in the air, and it is very difficult to pick him off. It’s just inexperience, but he showed a fighting attitude.”
The former Indian cricketer praised the batsmen for having the guts to rally and score more than 200 runs after being down and out at 89/5, with Shardul Thakur scoring a 29-ball 68.
“It is good to win. The boys have shown quality. After losing early wickets, the team recovered to score 200+ runs. We wanted the pitch to help the spinners. However, you need enough runs. Pandit said, “Shardul and Rinku Singh (46 off 33) hit back at the opponents.
KKR skipper Nitish Rana claimed that Suyash was useful in his strategy of putting pressure on the opposition batsmen in the middle overs.
“Today also, we fell (to 5/89), and (Rahmanullah) Gurbaz deserves credit for that.” (57 runs in 44 balls). Shardul Thakur’s innings was excellent. Shardul would be brought on by others but Rinku (Singh) held one end as we had intended.
We always wanted to avoid providing momentum to the RCB batsmen in the middle overs. Suyyash bowled excellent balls in his first match. Even we don’t know him very well yet. He supports her. If we needed a third spinner, it was always our intention to add him,” continued Rana.
The best player of the game, Shardul surprised even himself by hitting nine fours and three sixes in each of his strokes.
Even I am unsure of its origin. Everyone would have concluded based on the scorecard that we are in trouble. But your unconscious mind has the upper hand. At a higher level, you also need to have some skills, but we also put a lot of effort into our network.
“The coaching staff does throwdowns and provides us with range-hitting options. And you know the pitch always favors batting. It was the perfect day.”
After putting pressure on KKR till the 13th over, RCB skipper du Plessis claimed that his team had lost its way. Additionally, he said that his batsmen needed to get better against the top spinners.
“We set it in the 12th or 13th over… probably 20-25 runs were too many. Shardul played well. Their leg-spinners dominated us. It was still a good wicket…but the nature of mystery spinners is they get wickets.
“We were pretty average with the bat. you learn the lesson. Two or three days back, you played some great cricket. It got away from us,” said the South African.
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