IPL 2020 | With the way KL Rahul batted, KXIP deserved to win, reckons Sanjay Manjrekar

After a thrilling 40-over contest, where both the teams ended on the same score of 176, KXIP were in a spot of bother as Jasprit Bumrah bowled an excellent over to stop Kl Rahul, Nicholas Pooran, and Deepak Hooda on the score of just 5. However, Mohammad Shami turned the game on its head by defending 6 runs and the first Super Over ended in a tie.

In the second Super Over, Mumbai gave the target of 12 to Punjab, which was easily chased by the duo of Chris Gayle and Mayank Agarwal against Trent Boult. In the end, Rahul was awarded the Man of the Match award for his dynamic 77 in the normal game time, taking his team as close to the target as possible. 

Sanjay Manjrekar reckoned that the team from Punjab deserved to win the match because Rahul had batted brilliantly. He pointed out that the game of T20 cricket should not go on forever and the teams should share the points when the first Super Over gets tied in a league system, where lots of matches are played. 

“It was all excitement and I am really happy for Kings XI Punjab because suddenly now they are at number 6 and really when you watch the full game with Rahul the way he was batting while the chase was going on - you felt that they deserved to win that match,” Manjrekar said in ‘Time Out’ show of ESPNcricinfo. 

“One is - it’s a bit of a dampener because you’ve started in a very excited state but you know at the league stage when you have so many league matches whether a super over makes sense is one thing. And if not - if the Super Over gets tied the first one maybe we can share points and move on. Because sometimes this pot needs a bit of timer on it. It just sorts of drags on for far too long and T20 cricket cannot be about a game that just drags on.”