Image Credit- BCCI
With just 12 T20
matches under his belt prior to Saturday night, Harshit Rana was left with the
daunting task of defending 12 runs off the last over in the Kolkata Knight
Riders’ opening IPL 2024 encounter. Heinrich Klaasen was on a rampage, scoring
56 runs off of 26 deliveries. Mitchell Starc, the most expensive player in the
IPL, bowled the preceding over, which only yielded 26 runs. Shahbaz Ahmed,
Klaasen’s partner, has smashed 16 runs after facing just four balls. It
appeared that Sunrisers Hyderabad would pull off a spectacular heist when
Klaasen smacked Harshit’s opening ball of the over for six.
After Sunrisers’ No.
6 Abdul Samad was dismissed on the penultimate delivery of the 17th over, their
win probability was reduced to 0.35%. At Eden Gardens, they were 97.2%
favourites with five balls remaining. In front of an ecstatic home crowd,
Harshit, however, maintained his composure to dismiss both Shahbaz and Klaasen
to secure the victory.
“To be honest, in the last over I thought anything could happen,” KKR
captain Shreyas Iyer said after the match. “They needed 13 runs and we
probably didn’t have the most experienced bowler bowling at that particular
time.
“But I had that belief in him. I knew that something [good] would
happen.”
“To be honest,
Harshit was a bit nervous when he was coming to bowl [the 20th over]. I looked
into his eyes and I told him ‘this is your moment, buddy. You need to make the
best use of it and don’t think much about it’.
“I told him ‘Even if we lose, it’s fine. You just back yourself and you
see to it that you execute whatever I say and what messages we got from
inside’. It was a big cluster [of players] in between, but I tried to calm him
down as much as possible and then the rest is history.”
Andre Russell, who
blazed an unbeaten 64 off 25 to take KKR to 208 after walking in at 119 for 6,
praised Harshit’s attitude.
“I think his body language was on point in the last over; he wanted the
ball,” Russell said. “That is the body language we all need as
professionals. If he was shying away from it, it could have gone their way.
“He told me that he wanted the last over. So he claimed it and he did
deliver for us. With the first ball gone for six, still there was some doubt
there, but you know he came back strong and he got the job done.”