Lucknow Super Giants are overwhelmingly out of playoff contention after a five-wicket defeat against Chennai Super Kings at the Chidambaram Stadium on Sunday evening.
LSG were defending a good target of 203, but Urvil Patel’s onslaught was just too much for them. Having said that, their catching was quite pathetic. They dropped as many as three catches, and had that not happened, they could have won the match and kept their slim play-off hopes alive. Rishabh Pant highlighted this at the post-match presentation.
Also Read: Remember the name: Urvil Patel of CSK hits the joint-fastest IPL fifty against LSG
“Definitely, it was a great game. Everything was coming nicely, we knew they’d put us under pressure, as that’s how it happens in Chennai. In T20s, fielding standards have to be there, too many dropped catches,” the LSG captain said.
Urvil became the joint-fastest fifty getter in the history of the Indian Premier League. He took just 13 balls and equalled Rajasthan Royals’ Yashasvi Jaiswal’s feat against Kolkata Knight Riders in 2023.
During the course of his 65 off 23 balls, he hit five big sixes in a row. He was all power and confidence. Urvil was dropped after his fifty by Digvesh Rathi, and then in the penultimate over of the innings, bowled by Avesh Khan, Prashant Veer was dropped off back-to-back deliveries, first by Rathi and then by West Indian Nicholas Pooran. Pant praised the 27-year-old wicketkeeper batsman from Gujarat.
“Urvil played a fantastic and unbelievable knock, like Josh Inglis [85 off 33 balls] for us. We knew someone had to take the attack, Inglis for us, Urvil for them. But we kept fighting and had our chances,” he said.
LSG should have scored more!
Frankly, LSG were quite a few runs short after Inglis’ assault. Those runs that they didn’t score owing to a middle-order failure came back to haunt them. Pant acknowledged that they could have scored more; however, they still had a good score to defend.
“The way we started, we wanted more, but we knew close to 200-210 was good. It was easy to bat at the start, and then it became difficult,” he said.
Aiden Markram bowled the last over with CSK needing 10 to win. After two wides, Shivam Dube smashed him for back-to-back sixes to finish off the match with four balls to spare. When asked if he had Shahbaz Ahmed in mind to bowl the last over, before going for Markram, the Indian player said, “That thought did occur, but they had two left-handed batters, and Markram had done the job before.”