The Ekana Stadium pitch in Lucknow usually provides bowlers with some assistance, especially with its slowness and sluggishness. The one prepared for Wednesday’s wasn’t too slow and sluggish, but free-flowing strokeplay certainly wasn’t easy.
The Rajasthan Royals, however, made better use of the conditions to prevail over a sloppy Lucknow Super Giants by 40 runs, moving up to No.2 in the points table.
This was a much-needed victory for the Royals, especially since their back-to-back losses. What’s more important is they won even after Vaibhav Sooryavanshi scored only 8.
Put into bat, the Royals — in trouble early on with Mohammed Shami’s back-to-back wickets and strikes from the impressive Prince Yadav and Mohsin Khan — could somehow stretch their total to 159/6. That was purely due to Ravindra Jadeja’s unbeaten 43 off 29 balls and his unbroken seventh-wicket partnership of 49 in 4.1 overs with Impact Player Shubham Dubey (19 not out off 11 balls), who replaced opener Yashasvi Jaiswal.
The start wasn’t fluent for Jadeja, who came in at the crease after captain Riyan Parag’s dismissal with the Royals 62/4 in nine overs. The senior all-rounder soon lost both
set batters Shimron Hetmyer and Donovan Ferreira, with the scoring rate not even seven runs per over going into the death.
Jadeja, though, ran hard between the wickets, taking a number of twos, which too upped the run rate. All of his big strokes came in the final over of the innings, which pushed the team total past 150.
Early collapse
The Super Giants’ chase began in the worst possible manner as they found themselves reeling at 11/3 in the third over. And they just couldn’t recover from there, despite Mitchell Marsh’s 41-ball 55.
Jofra Archer struck for the Royals again in his first spell. After Ayush Badoni, the other opener, was run out, Archer hit the hard length to effect a mishit off Aiden Markram
for the fall of the third Lucknow wicket.
Just prior, Lucknow captain Rishabh Pant played a reckless and unnecessary stroke to gift his wicket away to Nandre Burger. The out-of-form Nicholas Pooran tried hard to gain some rhythm, but couldn’t outsmart Jadeja, especially on that kind of a surface.
The Super Giants, though, still had a glimmer of hope till Marsh and the young Mukul Choudhary were at the crease. But Burger’s slower one accounted for the Australian, before Mukul was undone by Brijesh Sharma’s length.
Archer then cleaned up the tail as the Super Giants were bundled out for 119 in 18 overs.
Costly return
Pacer Mayank Yadav, in his first appearance for LSG this edition, had a tough time (0/56). He erred in length as Hetmyer first took him on for a six and two boundaries in his second over.
Mayank gave away as many as 20 in his final over as Jadeja took advantage of the wrong length to hit two boundaries before finishing the Royals innings off with a six.