NEWS
Follow UsOver the years, Chinnaswamy Stadium is known to produce high-scoring thrillers and on Monday, it was no different as Lucknow Super Giants edged past the Royal Challengers Bangalore by one wicket on the final delivery to seal a memorable win.
In pursuit of 213 runs, the visiting side lost a flurry of wickets in the powerplay and were tottering at 23 for three before a 76-run stand between KL Rahul and Marcus Stoinis bailed the side out of the challenging situation.
The Australian batter smashed 65 off 30 deliveries to give the Super Giants some much-needed impetus in the run chase. While he was dismissed in the 11th over along with the skipper in the following over, Nicholas Pooran enthralled the fans with a 15-ball 50, the joint second fastest to help Lucknow inch closer to the target and eventually get over the line.
In a post-match press conference, Wayne Parnell, who scalped three wickets for 41 runs in his four overs, backed his bowling unit despite failing to defend the total after having the opposition down and out.
"It was pretty tense towards the end. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of the last ball, but credit to Lucknow. They chased it down really well. A couple of the guys came in, and it looked like they weren’t going to mishit anything. That was probably the difference in the game, he said.
"It has been a general trend at the Chinnaswamy, chasing is something that teams look to do as the wicket gets better under lights. That was the case this evening as well," he further added.
The South African speedster also praised the effort of Stoinis and Pooran and admitted they never looked like getting dismissed.
"When Stoinis played the way he played, that allowed guys to come in and take the game on early. Nicholas Pooran did that as well. Some very clean hitting and then a couple of wickets at the backend to kind of bring us back."
"But, if you look back, if we had an extra 10 runs, that could have been the difference. I still felt it was a decent total, but we had to execute some things," he further added.
Parnell also shared insights on the surface and stated that the wicket was on the slower side, making run scoring a lot more difficult in the early stages of the game.
"The wicket was a little bit slow early on. You could see that Faf and Virat, both being stroke players, mistimed a couple of balls. Under lights, it tends to skid on a bit more."
“Even though they started slowly, Virat played a brilliant knock and having Faf go all the way through, that’s something that any coach would be happy about," he concluded.
Royal Challengers Bangalore have lost two out of the three games and will now lock horns against the Delhi Capitals at home in an afternoon encounter on April 15.
