IPL 2018, SRH vs KXIP: Hits and Misses

#1 Hit: Ankit Rajpoot

Ankit Rajpoot won his second consecutive Man of the Match award.

Before this season, Ankit Rajpoot had played just 11 IPL games and had picked up 8 wickets. He was a part of Chennai Super Kings in 2013 and 2014 where he played just two games. For Kolkata Knight Riders, he got to play 9 games and impressed.

Hence, he was bought for ₹3 crores by Kings XI Punjab, a team which had filled its side with several stars and thus, his selection went unnoticed. After sitting out for the first few games, Rajpoot played his first game of the season against his former side KKR and was expensive. However, he came back well as he won the Man of the Match award in the last game against Delhi Daredevils for his superb spell of 2/23.

In this game, he continued his good form. The Uttar Pradesh pacer was brilliant in the powerplay. He broke the back of SRH’s top-order with an excellent 3-over spell upfront where he took 3 wickets. He first prized out skipper Kane Williamson with some extra bounce in the first and then sent Shikhar Dhawan and Wriddhiman Saha in his next two overs. At the end of the powerplay, Rajpoot’s figures read 3/9 in 3 overs. And then he came back to bowl the final over and finished with a fifer as he bowled a good final over where he gave away just 5 runs and picked up 2 wickets.

The 24-year-old pacer ran in and hit the pitch hard and extracted that extra bounce which troubled the SRH batsmen. He finished with 5/14 which is the best figures of this IPL.