Lucknow Super Giants captain KL Rahul said that it was a tactical plan from the team to hold Marcus Stoinis back in the 166-run chase against Rajasthan Royals at Wankhede Stadium. Stoinis, who was playing his first match of the season, came out to bat at number 8 and scored a quickfire 8 runs off 17 balls but it wasn’t enough for Lucknow as they lost the match by 3 runs.
Lucknow’s chase didn’t start on the right note as they lost Rahul on the first ball courtesy of a jaffa from Trent Boult. A sharp-inswinger breached the gap between Rahul’s pads and bat and hit the stump.
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After the match, Rahul admitted that he has to give the credit to Boult to get the better of him with a peach of a delivery which left him clueless.
“I didn’t see it (the ball that got him from Boult), if I did I could have done something about it. Have to give it to him. Was a good ball,” Rahul said after the match in a post-match presentation.
The Lucknow skipper further heaped praise on Stoinis to take the game closer in his first match of the season.
“We have a good team, and have enough options with bat and ball. Even when we were 20-odd for three, we knew we had a chance. Obviously, today we needed one good partnership which we never got going. At the end, it was excellent from Stoinis to get it close and to do it in his first game of the season will give him confidence,” he added.
He further admitted that it was a plan to hold Stoinis back so that he can unleash himself in the last five overs and asserted that they will continue to do unpredictable things in the upcoming matches.
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“It was always a plan (to hold Stoinis back), we know how dangerous he can be in the last five overs. As I said, we have a lot of all-rounders, so many options and so we could shuffle the batting order a bit. We like to be a bit unpredictable a bit. These kind of totals can be a bit tricky at times, plan was to throw the bowlers off their lengths a bit but didn’t happen. But we’re a side that would continue to try being unpredictable in the coming games too,” Rahul said.
He further talked about his bowlers leaking too many runs in the death overs.
“We couldn’t execute our plans at the end, the yorkers and other plans. If you miss your plans, batters these days will put you in trouble. We’ll try to work harder and handle the pressure better. One bad game won’t change things, will be a good learning for us,” he concluded.
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