We're done with the halfway mark of the group stages this IPL. It's marked with a record run chase in the history of T20 cricket. From here, though, you can shift to follow Vaibhav Sooryavanshi's six-laden fifty. Until next time, it's goodnight and goodbye from us!
KL Rahul is the Player of the Match: "I was very pleased at the end of the first 20 overs. Something that I've been working on for a very long time behind the scenes... for now it was about doing well in the IPL. Just to step back a little back and see where the T20 game has gone. Watching the T20 World Cup and some guys coming in... There was a time when the T20 game was slightly different, and I, as an opener, could take my time. But today's demand is that the first six overs are the most important. I had to sit back and see where I was at. I stuck to being true to my game. In T20 cricket, that's the mindset I'm in right now - that there's no time to say later. There's time in ODI cricket... [but in T20s] there's no time to think you can go next over. I've had to work really hard on my mental set-up."
Shreyas Iyer: "I'm running out of words. First of all, it was scorching hot there to come out and field... We were presuming that the wicket would be turning. But there wasn't much turn to offer. The ball was holding a bit. Kudos to KL. In my mind, I was just saying that what get they get from here on, we just need to get one more run. He was improvising and playing beautiful shots. I just said if they can, we can too. We have chased around 220 or 225 with a few overs left. So the mindset was very similar - get as many runs as you can in the powerplay. Right now we just want to go and have fun as much as possible. It was three days of hard work - practising and playing in the heat."
Time for the presentations
Priyansh Arya: "We just felt that we could score a hundred in the powerplay. The pitch was very good. Initially, we thought they would make 240, which we could chase down... I was having a lot of fun [watching Prabh hitting sixes]. Ricky sir had said that if we play our best game, we could chase this down. Just have some self-belief."
Vinny: "KL's score should be the highest T20 individual score on the losing side, right?" --- Yup, beating Chris Gayle's by one run.
Axar Patel: "We're making the same mistakes repeatedly. If you don't support the bowlers on such a wicket, I think you deserve to lose. At the same time, our bowling unit also needs to take a look [at them], given their score in the powerplay. If we grab the crucial moments, two or three results would have gone our way."
Shashwat: "To think that 264 would have been 50 runs too many at a time in 50-over cricket....CRAZY!!" --- Yup, especially with one man alone scoring that many in the format.
Arquam: "Despite all the talk of bat dominating ball, and advantage towards batting, this has been quite a spectacle to watch!"
David: "529 runs plundered in 39 overs today, this is crazy!!"
Meanwhile, Ravi Shastri says on broadcast that Lungi Ngidi is "stable now" after banging his head on the ground while looking to take a catch.
7.44pm Who would've thunk even 264 wouldn't be enough?! We're in the era of breathless and ruthless T20 batting, and PBKS gave another account of that this evening. To chase 265 down with seven balls left is setting an extremely high benchmark. Prabh and Arya crashed 116 runs in the powerplay - one hundred and sixteen!! - with nine fours and ten sixes. The game was all but decided at the time, you'd think. So the cliche still holds: no score is safe.
1 to win.
