Picture Credit: Twitter
Match no. 56 of IPL 2022 is underway between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). After winning the toss, Mumbai Indians captain Rohit Sharma opted to bowl first. But his decision was proved wrong by KKR's opening pair of Ajinkya Rahane and Venkatesh Iyer put up a half-century stand for the first wicket.
Both the batters, especially Venkatesh Iyer looked in a good rhythm as the batter was smashing MI bowlers for fun. The southpaw batter took on Murugan Ashwin, Daniel Sams, and Riley Meredith right from the start. It seemed Iyer was looking to make a statement on his comeback. MI bowlers were trying their best to dismiss Iyer but none of them succeeded.
So, Ishan Kishan took the onus of himself to get rid of Venkatesh Iyer. The Mumbai Indians wicketkeeper tried to distract Iyer by chirping a few words at the batter. And the trick worked for MI as Iyer perished to Kumar Kartikeya while trying to take the charge on the bowler. Iyer was caught at cover-point while he tried to smash an outside-off-stump delivery.
Watch the incident here:
Iyer gets his mojo back!
Although Venkatesh Iyer did not score big, the batter got his mojo back with some fine shots in the middle. The KKR opener did not allow the MI bowlers to settle right from the beginning. Iyer played some free-flowing shots and scored a quickfire 43 off just 24 balls. Such was the dominance from Iyer, that in the partnership of 60 runs, he himself scored 43. On the back of Iyer's knock, KKR posted their highest powerplay score (64/1) of IPL 2022.
This solid start provided by the openers allowed the middle-order batters to play freely. Nitish Rana made the most of the opportunity presented to him and aggregated some quick runs. Meanwhile, Ajinkya Rahane could only score a run-a-ball 25.