IPL 2019: Umpires award four penalty runs to the KXIP after Andre Russell misses the ball in lights

The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) registered their second consecutive victory in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL). They went past the Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) easily after posting a total of 218 runs on the board as the visitors were never in the chase despite the half-centuries from Mayank Agarwal and David Miller. KXIP and controversy seem to go hand-in-hand this season and something bizarre happened which left everyone confused to bring the officials at the centre stage again.

In the sixth over of the chase, Nitish Rana fielded the ball from covers and lobbed it back to Andre Russell, who was stationed at mid-off. However, the Caribbean all-rounder lost the ball in the lights. Russell took an evasive action to avoid getting hit and the ball went away to the boundary.

This created a huge confusion as the umpires got together with an animated Dinesh Karthik. Ravi Ashwin was seen wandering around the boundary rope as well as the confusion grew. Karthik wasn’t pleased that the overthrow was being taken into consideration as the ball should’ve been dead. After a long discussion, eventually, the umpires awarded four overthrows and Karthik wasn’t amused.

But again, the umpires again went with the rule books and were within their rights to award the runs to the batting team as the ball was still in play at that point in time.

Here’s the video:

Another Russell special at the Eden

It was another day where Andre Russell showed off his brute power at the Edens gardens. The hard-hitting West Indian all-rounder walked in to bat in the 15th over and had a lucky break early on. He was out bowled (when he was batting on 3) which later resulted in a no-ball as only three fielders were present inside the 30-yard ring. After the reprieve, Russell went berserk as he finished with a brutal 17-ball 48 to propel his team to 218 runs.

The Caribbean also went on to have a huge impact with the ball. He got the prized scalp of Chris Gayle in his first over and added the Sarfaraz Khan’s wicket to his name as well later in the innings. Hence, he finished the game with figures of 2/21. Thus, it was a superb night for the all-rounder. This performance helped him win the second successive player of the match award this season as KKR climbed to the top of the table.

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