'Where is Ishan Kishan?' - Twitter not happy with Saurabh Tiwary playing in first game of IPL 2020
Ishan Kishan played seven matches last season and was expected to play according to many experts.
The 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) finally got underway with the game between Mumbai Indians (MI) and the Chennai Super Kings (CSK). It always seemed the perfect game to start the tournament given the fact that there was so much excitement built around it. Ahead of the game, there was so much predicting done about the playing XIs of the teams.
However, once the toss took place, both the sides managed to surprise everyone with their team selections. While the CSK didn’t pick Dwayne Bravo in their XI and preferred Sam Curran, the defending champions handed a debut to Australian pacer James Pattinson. But one player who all expected to play for MI was Ishan Kishan given that he had featured for them throughout the season last year.
But Saurabh Tiwary was included in the final XI by the Rohit Sharma-led side which has raised quite a few eyebrows. The left-hander, interestingly, played for the same team in the inaugural IPL and had shone with the bat. Moreover, this is Tiwary’s first IPL appearance since 2017. Even then, he was with the MI team and had played against KKR opening the innings. The southpaw had mustered 52 runs off 43 balls in that game.
Overall, Tiwary scored 1276 runs at an average of 28.36 and a strike-rate of 119.59 with seven half-centuries and will be keen on adding more runs to his kitty.
Ishan Kishan’s record in IPL 2019
One possible reason for Ishan Kishan being benched is his record last year. He had played only seven matches for MI and mustered only 101 runs at an average of 16.83 and strike-rate of 101. However, the fans weren’t happy with the decision and they slammed the team for dropping a very good batsman from the line-up. Meanwhile, MI will be hoping that their decision turns out be a good one and Tiwary delivers batting at four for the team.
It will also be interesting to see if the team will back Saurabh Tiwary ahead of Ishan Kishan for the next few matches even if he fails.
Here’s how fans reacted:
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