“It looked like they weren’t going to mishit anything” - Wayne Parnell on Stoinis, Pooran blinders

Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) left-arm pacer Wayne Parnell credited Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) batters Marcus Stoinis and Nicholas Pooran for their excellent knocks in the IPL 2023 clash on Monday, April 10. According to Parnell, the way the Lucknow duo batted, it never looked like they would mishit anything.

LSG beat RCB by one wicket in a pulsating encounter at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru. Chasing 213, Lucknow got home courtesy of stupendous performances from Stoinis (65 off 30) and Pooran (62 off 19).

Lucknow lost their way after Pooran’s dismissal in the 17th over. But they held their nerve to scamper home off the last ball. Speaking at the post-match press conference, Parnell opined that Stoinis and Pooran’s knocks made a big difference. He stated:

“It was pretty tense towards the end. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong side of the last ball, but credit to Lucknow. They chased it down really well. A couple of the guys came in and it looked like they weren’t going to mishit anything. That was probably the difference in the game.

“At Chinnaswamy, chasing is something that teams look to do as the wicket gets better under lights. That was the case this [Monday] evening as well.”

The 33-year-old added that Stoinis’ assault set the tone for LSG and Pooran followed suit. Admitting that a few more runs could have helped, Parnell commented:

“When Stoinis played the way he played, that allowed guys to come in and take the game on early. Nicholas Pooran did that as well. Some very clean hitting and then a couple of wickets at the backend to kind of bring us back. But, if you look back, if we had an extra 10 runs, that could have been the difference. I still felt it was a decent total, but we had to execute some things.”

Parnell registered figures of 3/41, while Mohammed Siraj claimed 3/22 even as most of the other RCB bowlers struggled.

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“The wicket was a little bit slow early on” - Parnell on RCB’s batting approach

While Bangalore only lost two wickets batting first, some experts reckoned that they should have scored more than 212. Asked about RCB’s conservative batting approach in the first half, Parnell explained:

“You’ll have to ask the coach that one (smiles). The wicket was a little bit slow early on. You could see that with Faf [Du Plessis] and Virat [Kohli], both being stroke players, mistimed a couple of balls. Under lights, it tends to skid on a bit more.

“Even though they started ‘slowly’, Virat played a brilliant knock and having Faf go all the way through, that’s something that any coach would be happy about.”

While Du Plessis top-scored with 79* off 46 balls, Kohli contributed 61 off 44 as the RCB openers added 96 runs for the first wicket.