“I Looked Into His Eyes And Told…”: KKR Captain Shreyas Iyer’s Message Before Harshit Rana Last-Over Heroics | Cricket News

Kolkata Knight Riders captain Shreyas Iyer admitted on Saturday that he was nervous as Sunrisers Hyderabad’s Heinrich Klassen went ballistic in pursuit of a stiff target of 209 runs in an IPL match here on Saturday. Chasing a stiff 209, Klassen (63 off 29b) single-handedly brought SRH within sniffing distance of an unlikely victory before eventually falling short by four points. “I had butterflies in my stomach from the 17th over! To be honest, I thought anything could happen in the last over,” Iyer said.

SRH needed 13 runs in the last over and the odds were in their favor with a red-hot Klassen and Shahbaz Ahmed at the crease.

But Iyer decided to throw the ball to young Harshit Rana and he too did not disappoint. Rana fired both Klaasen and Ahmed to suppress SRH.

“Harshit was a bit nervous when he came to bowl (the last over). I told him, ‘Even if we lose, it’s fine’. I tried to calm him down as much as possible.

“(Sunil) Narine and (Andre) Russell have a lot of experience. I am excited to see how Russell performed with bat and ball. Sunny (Narine) did well.

“It’s a luxury to have them in the team. Every time you start with a win it gives you motivation. There are areas where we need to improve as a team – fielding is one of them!” SRH skipper Pat Cummins said he never thought they would come so close while chasing an imposing 209, without Klassen’s superb knock, which was ably supported by Ahmed (16 off 5).

“A close game in the end, a beautiful game of cricket. Unfortunately it didn’t go the way we wanted. I thought for the most part I was very happy with the way we bowled,” he said.

“It’s one of those games, anyway, great job by Klaas (Klaasen) and Shahbaz to get us back into the game and get us in that position. Who would have thought we would get so close.”

“Unfortunately a bit too much. In a match where we didn’t really have everything together. We were still almost competing against a very good team at their home venue, a lot to be encouraged by, a lot of good performers, a few of points to get too to work on,” Cummins added.

The Australian ace pacer said Andre Russell had just taken SRH’s game away with his heroics with the bat.

Russell was at his destructive best, hitting seven sixes and three fours on his way to his unbeaten 25-ball 64.

“Obviously, at the end of the day, Dre Russ (Russell) does what Dre Russ does, he’s pretty hard to control. Overall, I thought we did a pretty good job,” he said.

“You do your planning, you try to do your best, but he’s a pretty tough guy to bowl against, you played a few good shots, a few balls. Maybe we could have bowled something different, but the toughest job in cricket is ultimately bowling against someone like that.”

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