KKR paid the price for including Robin Uthappa against MI, reckons Sanjay Manjrekar

Even after the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) lost six matches in a row in the 2019 Indian Premier League (IPL), they had the chance of progressing to the playoffs in their last match against the Mumbai Indians (MI). However, Dinesh Karthik and Co surrendered tamely and lost the game by nine wickets at the Wankhede Stadium, thereby crashing out of the T20 tournament.

The Knight Riders managed only 133 runs after losing the toss. After an opening wicket stand of 49 runs between Shubman Gill and Chris Lynn, Robin Uthappa couldn’t get going and crawled to a painstaking 40 off 47 balls with one four and three sixes. He strained to find his timing and at one point in time, could only manage nine runs off 21 balls as the run-rate came down below 6.

Mumbai chased down the target with 23 balls to spare. Uthappa had a pretty torrid time in the tournament as he got only 282 runs in 12 matches at an average of 31.33. He was bashed by the KKR fans for the lacklustre knock. Earlier in a game against the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in Kolkata, he scored at a strike-rate of below 50 and even then he was bashed severely.

In the meantime, Harsha Bhogle backed Robbie, saying that even the best can have bad days on the field. He took to Twitter and wrote, “I am going to stick my neck out for Robin Uthappa here. Everybody has bad days, you judge people by whether they tried hard enough. We’ve all failed too. Mightier players have had forgettable days on bigger stages.”

Here is Bhogle’s tweet

However, Sanjay Manjrekar, the cricketer-turned-commentator, feels that including Uthappa was a blunder. Manjrekar replied to his tweet and wrote. “KKR paid the price for bringing back Uthappa in the playing XI for no reason at all and on top of that, giving him a crucial batting position. This is about flawed tactics – the controllable- that cost them. You sticking your neck out is irrelevant,”

Here is Manjrekar’s reply

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