IPL 2025: Quinton de Kock, Bowlers Lead KKR To 8-Wicket Win Over Rusty RR
KKR defeated Rajasthan Royals by eight wickets at Barsapara Cricket Stadium, with Quinton de Kock scoring 97 not out, securing their first points of IPL 2025.
In a match where it often seemed like neither team wanted to win, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) beat Rajasthan Royals (RR) by eight wickets at Guwahati’s Barsapara Cricket Stadium to secure their first points of IPL 2025. New recruit opener Quinton de Kock carried his bat with a stellar 61-ball 97, finishing the match with a six against Jofra Archer in the 18th over, and ending Riyan Parag’s hopes for a happy homecoming in his state.
Chasing a sub-par 154, KKR avoided any funky business in the opening department in Sunil Narine’s absence by sending his replacement Moeen Ali alongside de Kock. But Moeen is not Narine and struggled to not only get any big shots away but also those half-edges that go through vacant regions and get boundaries.
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de Kock crucially showed his experience by taking extra risks on the other end and found success against Maheesh Theekshana and Jofra Archer. His timing was exquisite almost every time and the extra pace of both Archer and the Sri Lankan spinner seemed to help him on the otherwise sluggish track.
Parag probably understood that and brought himself and Sandeep Sharma on which controlled the momentum a bit. That led to a moment of miscommunication between the openers on the first ball after the powerplay, which saw Moeen run out for 5 (12).
Royals debutant Wanindu Hasaranga had a bad first over, giving away two loose short balls that de Kock and Ajinkya Rahane accepted for boundaries. Theekshana also gave away one six from the other end but then, a change of ends for Hasaranaga brought him some luck as Rahane mis-swept one for a catch.
Here, KKR had a plethora of options available to players who could have killed off the game. But they made the curious choice of sticking with their batting order and sent in Angkrish Raghuvanshi — it took the youngster quite a while to find his first boundary, which meant de Kock had to continue ticking runs alone.
The South African, thankfully for KKR, was in good enough touch to do that, which never let the chase get too tricky. KKR needed 43 in the last six overs when, as if to say that they are fine with waiting for some crazy mistakes to happen, RR threw the ball to Nitish Rana. Angkrish got a boundary against him on the last ball and all the pressure was off.
RR missed their last chance when they unitedly failed to run Angkrish out in the 17th over. Theekshana gave away five wides two balls later and Parag made the fatal mistake of giving the next six balls to Archer.
The Englishman’s quick deliveries were like water to a thirsty de Kock on that track who hit a four and two consecutive sixes (two wides in between which ended his chance to get a century) to finish things off.
In the first innings, RR openers Sanju Samson and Yashasvi Jaiswal got off to the kind of start that does more harm than good to a team. They showed intent to hit boundaries from the first ball but neither hit enough nor ran between the wickets well enough to supplement them.
It meant that when Vaibhav Arora was able to sneak a yorker in to knock off Samson’s leg-stump before the end of the fourth over, he got out for 13 (11), despite hitting two beautiful boundaries. Jaiswal put away a full-toss against Arora but in the seventh over, Moeen tied him down.
Parag, playing his first match as captain in front of his home crowd, wanted to entertain with his confidence. He turned the tide for a while with sixes against Harshit Rana, Arora and Varun Chakaravarthy on either side of that Moeen over.
However, the rush of blood worked against him when he tried one shot too many against the in-form Chakaravarthy but didn’t read that the ball was turning away. It went miles in the air and de Kock took an excellently calm catch, which would have boosted his confidence.
Jaiswal tried to slog Moeen in the next over and kept on trying until one went straight to long-on. Like his skipper, he got out with an underwhelming strike rate of 120.83.
From being too boundary-heavy and not caring about strike rotation, RR swung the opposite way when Nitish Rana and promoted Wanindu Hasaranga came together. This allowed KKR exactly what they wanted: the chance to build pressure with their spinners.
Hasaranga miss-timed (both off the bat and situation-wise) and went the Parag way while Moeen knocked Rana’s off-stump, keeping those longing for Narine happy, at least for the time being.
From then on, it was all about RR trying to rebuild and losing wickets at regular intervals. KKR had way too many options to rotate around — all masters of using a bit of hold and grip in the surface and use specifically against each batter.
RR’s depth ended with Jofra Archer hitting a couple of sixes in the last over. Although it didn’t seem that way for 75% of the match, Chakaravarthy’s mid-innings statement that KKR ‘couldn’t have asked for anything better’ than the 152-run target proved spot-on.
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