KKR captain Shreyas Iyer has revealed that they wanted to give Andre Russell as many balls as possible during their match against SRH on Saturday. Russell scored 49 not out off 28 balls, including three massive sixes off Washington Sundar in the last over, which helped KKR beat SRH by 54 runs.

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) dominated Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Saturday in Match 61 of IPL 2022 at MCA Stadium, Pune. They posted 177/6 batting first and then resticted SRH to 123/8. Andre Russell starred with both bat and ball. First, he scored an unbeaten 28-ball 49, laced with four sixes and three fours, to help his recover from 94/5, and then led the bowling unit by returning excellent figures of 4-0-22-3.

Speaking at the post-match presentation, Shreyas Iyer was seen happy with his side’s dominant win over SRH. Shreyas then revealed that they wanted to give Russell the strike as much as they could during their innings. It panned out well as the talismanic all-rounder smacked three sixes off the final over, bowled by Washington Sundar.

“Our mindset we came with in this game was outstanding, we were positive and it was really important to win this toss. Batting first in Pune teams have won a lot of matches,” Shreyas said on the post-match presentation.

“We were going over by over while batting, plan was to give Russell as much strike as possible and we were praying that he plays the last over because Washington had an over left. It worked out pretty well.”

Notably, Russell became the fifth player in IPL to score more than 300 runs and to take in excess of 15 wickets in a same season. Shane Watson, Dwayne Bravo, Jacques Kallis (twice) and Sunil Narine achieved the feat in the past. Russell has now aggregated 330 runs and has picked up 17 wickets in IPL 2022.

Following the result, KKR moved up to sixth place on the points table, with six wins and seven defeats. SRH, on the other hand, slipped to eighth. They have now lost seven matches and won five.