Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) batter Venkatesh Iyer bagged yet another low score in IPL 2025. He scored 14 runs off just 19 balls in a chase of 199 runs as his side lost the match by 39 runs in the end.
Chasing 199 runs to win, KKR were restricted to 158 runs for 9 wickets in their 20 overs as their batting crumbled under pressure once again. Iyer was guilty of slowing down the scoring rate of KKR when the team needed to score at 10 runs per over right from the start.
KKR had scored 43 runs for two wickets when Iyer walked out to bat. He failed to understand the pitch conditions and slowed down the scoring rate for the Knight Riders. He did not hit a single boundary during his knock as KKR went through a period of no boundaries till the time he was batting on the wicket.
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With Venkatesh Iyer not able to find the fence, it forced skipper Ajinkya Rahane, who was looking to anchor the innings, to go for big shots, and he perished just after Iyer lost his wicket in the 12th over. KKR lost back-to-back wickets with Iyer dismissed in the 12th over and Rahane in the 13th, which took all the momentum away from the Knight Riders in the run chase. Iyer has scored just 129 runs in 8 matches at an average of  25.80 so far in IPL 2025.
The lower order could not step up to the plate either. Rinku Singh (17 runs off 14 balls), Andre Russell (21 runs off 15 balls), Ramandeep Singh (1 run off 2 balls), and Moeen Ali (0 off 2 balls) failed to score runs for the side when it mattered the most.
KKR has now succumbed to their fifth loss of the season. They need to win all their remaining games to give themselves any chance of making the playoffs. The batters have now failed to win games for KKR in three consecutive run chases against LSG, PBKS, and GT. Meanwhile, Venkatesh Iyer was targeted on social media, and the KKR management was blamed for buying him at 23 crores. Fans blamed the management for letting go of Shubman Gill and retaining the southpaw over the Indian batter who scored 90 runs off 55 balls against KKR on his return to Eden Gardens.
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Former KKR skipper Eoin Morgan blamed the players for making the same mistakes throughout the season in his comments after KKR's loss to GT.
"Kolkata Knight Riders has simply not bounced back as well as we would have liked them to. It's always a good sign for a strong team with a lot of character around, but they had the same failures that they've shown throughout the tournament. They made a couple of changes (against GT), mainly to try and gain some impetus in their batting line-up, and it didn't necessarily come off. Were the changes worth it? They'll sit back and say no" Morgan said.
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