KKR didn’t beat us, we lost: SRH head coach Lara

PTI, May 5, 2023, 10:37 AM IST

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Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach Brian Lara blamed his batters for suffering their sixth defeat in the ongoing IPL, saying Kolkata Knight Riders didn’t beat them instead they lost the game.

Chasing a 172-run target set by KKR, SRH lost the match by five runs as they were restricted to 166 for eight here on Thursday night. SRH are now placed ninth in the 10-team standings with six points from nine games, while KKR are a rung above.

”We keep losing couple of wickets in powerplay and that always sets you back a bit. We again ask (Heinrich) Klassen, who has been batting tremendous for us, to do all the hardwork. He is coming in at No.6, we have got five quality players before him. It’s always been a task for him. ”The batters obviously will know the responsibility of winning such a game on a good batting track but we are unable to do it,” Lara said in the post-match press conference.

”We have to lay a bit more importance on partnerships and understanding a bit of match awareness. It’s all great to be aggressive but you have to got to use a little bit of upstairs to get the job done.” Lara praised the KKR spin duo of Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy.

”They are quality spinners. We have seen that as a trend that as the tournament goes on spinners are coming into play. The likes of Narine, Chakravarthy, they are all world-class spinners. ”We did put on a very good partnership (Aiden Markram and Klassen). We got ourselves right back in the game with a couple of big overs. Then again we lost a couple of wickets at very crucial stage of the match. ”I would say that we had a game to win and we have to hold our hands up and say they didn’t beat us we lost the game. The game was in our hands and we lost the game,” the West Indian great said.

The former champions have managed only three wins in nine outings, which has severely dented their playoff chances. ”The situation is that we want to be as positive as possible. We found ourselves a little bit tentative chasing a 140 odd against Delhi and find ourselves at the bottom of ranking. We will try to inject some positivity and intent in our batting,” Lara said.

KKR spinner Chakravarthy, meanwhile, said his game plan to challenge SRH batters to hit on the longer side of the boundary worked well. ”Definitely, there was lot of pressure, the only thing Nitish (Rana) was telling me was to challenge the longer end, so that was our basic plan. We wanted keep it simple and challenge them on the longer side,” he said. ”It’s definitely a very important win for us because from now it’s all do-or-die matches for us and we have to keep winning.”