After Kolkata Knight Riders’ terrific win over Royal Challengers Bangalore at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru, former cricketer Aakash Chopra picked Nitish Rana as the most valuable player of the game. Notably, the 29-year-old smashed 48 runs off just 21 deliveries and completely changed the complexion of the game as KKR were struggling to get going in the middle overs.
After Jason Roy was sent back to the pavilion, RCB bowlers came hard at the Knight Riders, and that’s when Rana changed gears to give KKR some much-needed momentum. Courtesy of his aggressive approach, the two-time champions posted 200 runs on board and eventually won their third match of the IPL 2023 season by 21 runs. Now, looking at the kind of impact Rana created in the middle, Chopra adjudged him as the MVP of the match.
“Who was my most valuable player? It's a slightly controversial pick, but listen to my logic attentively. I am saying it was Nitish Rana. Jason Roy scored a half-century, Varun Chakaravarthy picked up three wickets, Russell did the job, Suyash Sharma was outstanding, and Nitish didn't even score a fifty,” the 45-year-old stated on his YouTube channel.
“He, of course, scored 48 runs while batting, which was slightly chancy. Two very easy catches were dropped - one by Mohammed Siraj and the other by Harshal Patel. Nitish Rana gained from that. After that, his captaincy won your heart because he got so much spin in the first six overs and then used spin repeatedly. They played David Wiese, but he didn't feel David Wiese would be able to do that, so he got Andre Russell,” Chopra added.
The former batter also pointed out that the two-time champions came into the game with a definite plan, and it helped them to win the game against RCB, despite playing at Chinnaswamy, where the team batting second gets a massive advantage.
“Nine out of 10 times, what captains say at the toss - they don't really mean it, especially when they lose the toss. But this was very honest that they (KKR) wanted to bat first because they had three spinners and could choke them in the second innings as they did last time,” Chopra mentioned.
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