Lucknow: Mohammed Shami delivered a couple of beauties while a parsimonious Mohsin Khan snuffed out teen sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi as Lucknow Super Giants’ all-India bowling unit derailed Rajasthan Royals, restricting them to a meagre 159 for 6 in an IPL match Wednesday.
This is the third time in three games that the Royals’ top order has imploded, and things have spiralled southwards for the franchise.
The experience and class of Shami (2/30 in 4 overs), the Test bowler, stood apart while the lanky Mohsin (2/17 in 4 overs) was extremely disciplined, getting the ball to rear up and seam at the same time from awkward lengths.
The duo between them removed the four best batters of the Royals — Shami getting rid of Yashasvi Jaiswal (22) and Dhruv Jurel (0) off successive deliveries, and Mohsin removing Sooryavanshi (8 off 11 balls) and Shimron Hetmyer (22 off 18 balls) in two different spells.
The ever-improving Prince Yadav (2/29 in 4 overs) proved to be the ideal third dimension to the attack with his moving deliveries and timely dismissals.
Mayank Yadav (0/56 in 4 overs), returning from a very long rehabilitation, predictably looked the only bowler out of rhythm.
Skipper Riyan Parag, the debatable choice for captaincy purely based on cricketing merit, with a sequence of scores that reads 14 no, 8, 20, 3, 4, 12, 20, has proved to be more of a liability for the Royals.
The most important part was stacking up the dot ball count — between Shami (15) and Mohsin (11) — they cumulatively bowled 26 dot balls. Even Prince had an impressive 13 dot balls in his kitty.
However, the day would be remembered for the artist who had been with both red and white balls in his hand.
He bowled a sharp bouncer to Jaiswal that got big on him as the left-hander tried to hook it awkwardly, and skipper Rishabh Pant timed his jump to perfection to pluck off a superb one-handed catch.
Pant, whose bowling changes were on point, had a second catch when Shami bowled a peach, fuller-pitched on middle stump line to draw Jurel forward, and it deviated late, kissing the outside edge of his bat.
In the case of Mohsin, he set up the young Sooryavanshi with five successive dot balls — either pitched on hard length or slightly fuller. The sixth and final delivery of his second over was a 142 click fast leg-cutter, and the teenager threw the bat, only to find the leading edge balloon up. Digvesh Rathi, running backwards from his cover position, took a well-judged catch.
The Royals’ innings never had momentum, and Parag, as usual, tried to play the MS Dhoni ‘Helicopter’ shot, but more often than not, his success rate in pressure situations has been abysmally low.
Had veteran Ravindra Jadeja not stemmed the rot with a 29-ball-43 not out, the Royals wouldn’t have crossed the 150-run mark.
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