In a modest scoring encounter, it was the Lucknow Super Giants who would eventually prove to be the victors, defending the lowest total of the tournament in IPL 2023. It was the Rajasthan Royals who would win the toss and opted to bowl first.
The Super Giants had trouble getting off the hook despite a warring knock from Kyle Mayers early in the game. He scored a well-fought 51 while KL Rahul battled really hard albeit the runs came in pretty slowly. Despite the opening stands being a decent one, what went wrong for the Giants is that they were barely able to get in the groove and get the runs scoring in front of a striking Ravichandran Ashwin who bagged figures of 2 for 23 while Trent Boult was also phenomenal with the ball in his hands.
Here is what went down for the Rajasthan Royals
The Royals seemed well in control of the proceedings as Yashashvi Jaiswal managed to smash around 44 from 35 balls while Jos Buttler was unexpectedly slow as he could only gather 40 runs from 41 balls that somehow deterred the chase for the Rajasthan Royals.
It was a phenomenal display from Avesh Khan who would bag figures of 3 for 25 while Marcus Stoinis had numbers of 2 for 28. The Rajasthan Royals were expected to chase down the total but things went haywire for the Royals as they fell short of the finish line by 10 runs. Samson could only 2 runs from the four balls that he faced.
This is what Amol Muzumdar had to say about Sanju Samson
Domestic cricket legend, Amol Muzumdar had an interesting take on Samson’s approach, underlining the fact that he hacking the axe at his own feet. Amol said, “There’s something called muscle memory. Somebody like Sanju Samson is a classic case of see-the-ball, hit-the-ball. He’s not worried about consequences. (He’s) being as brave as possible, daring to score those boundaries and sixes. These are modern-day cricketers, Sanju, Yashasvi Jaiswal, even Devdutt Padikkal to an extent. They don’t have the kind of player who could adapt and play the different role on this kind of surface, where Tom (Moody) rightly said that you need to hit those pockets.”
