Kolkata Knight Riders captain Dinesh Karthik on Sunday praised his players for their all-round clinical effort in his side’s eight-wicket win over Rajasthan Royals in an IPL match but said they need to improve in certain aspects.
“It was a pretty clinical effort, the bowlers bowled welland the batsmen backed it up well too,” Karthik said.
“In India, you get to play on a lot of slow surfaces and youneed to adapt to them. We need to improve in a few situations, but that’salways the case,” he added.
Asked about his side’s debutant Harry Gurney pacer who tooktwo wickets for 25 runs, Karthik said, “Well Harry (Gurney) is a trueprofessional, he’s played in leagues all over the world.”
Gurney, on his part, said, “It was a pitch that suited mycutter options, so a nice one to make my debut on. I work hard on my variationsand on my yorker and it is nice to have them in tough situations, although Ididn’t use it much tonight.
“I am working on a knuckle ball but I don’t think it’ll beready during the IPL, maybe somewhere in the English summer.”
KKR opener Chris Lynn, who scored 50, said, “I rode my luckagain. But we knew we had to go hard in the powerplay. It slowed up as theinnings progressed. It was a nice powerplay and we were in cruise control afterthat.”
On the ball which he inside-edged but did not dislodge thebail after hitting the leg stump, he said, “I nicked it, so I thought I wasgone one way or the other. It happens in T20 cricket. “Unbelievable (battingfrom Narine). He has done it for a couple of years now. We don’t talk too much.Just keep it simple. I am traditionally a slow starter. It is a longtournament, we are building nicely with important wins.”
Rajasthan Royals captain Ajinkya Rahane rued that his sidewere short by 10-20 runs.
“I think on this wicket 150-160 would have been good. We had runs on the board and a slower wicket. But, I don’t think we bowled to our plans. Lots of learning from this game though. Such things happen in cricket, we need to learn from our mistakes,” he said.