Huge things were expected from KXIP this season as they entered the IPL. It wasn’t a surprise that they were one of the few teams who many experts believed would make it to the playoffs.
They had the most exciting T20 players in their ranks, the likes of KL Rahul who had even leapfrogged Shikhar Dhawan as India’s frontline T20 opening batsman. To go with him, Punjab had Mayank Agarwal and Karun Nair, players with worthy T20 credentials. To add to the mix they had the Universe Boss Chris Gayle and the budding young talent Nicholas Pooran, who in his limited international career has shown that he is a game-changer.
Making that lineup more explosive was the big show “Glenn Maxwell” who was coming of a terrific limited-overs series against arch-rivals England. Their bowling boasted of having Indian pacer Mohammad Shami, West Indian “Salute” pacer Sheldon Cottrell, and England Yorker specialist Chris Jordan. The possible weak link was their spin department which had the likes of Afghanistan mystery spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Indian uncapped spinning combination of Murugan Ashwin and Krishnappa Gowtham while the highly impressive U-19 spinner Ravi Bishnoi too joined the ranks.
But contrary to pre-tournament expectations, KXIP faltered to deceive. The same old problems started to plague them right from the first game. Their team combinations lacked logic and their constant chopping and changing didn’t help either. They were developing the habit of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
Their journey in IPL 2020 had reached a point of no return. That is when they did something remarkable, they brought in Universe Boss into the mix and went with a slightly settled team heading into their clash against Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Even though they made hara-kiri of the target at the end, they somehow managed to win the game and that was a welcome change.
In a couple of days, they faced Mumbai Indians, who were in red hot form, and defeated them in what could arguably be the best ever T20 match (forget the IPL).
That win over MI in a thrilling fashion has given this team the belief that they could take down any team on their day. A fact which was resonated with the way they beat table-toppers Delhi Capitals yesterday.
Glenn Maxwell has finally found form with the bat, while Nicholas Pooran helped himself to a sparkling 50. The victory was even more special since it had a very little contribution from their captain fantastic KL Rahul, while the death overs bowling which had been their Achilles heel too looked in top form with Shami expertly bowling his Yorkers at will.
We are at the business end of the tournament and now is the time when teams generally like to motor along well. KXIP, other teams may like it or not, have started peaking just at the right time, they have defeated the top 3 in that table in 3 back to back matches and now are left with 4 matches with those at the other half of the table.
While the team has slowly found its mojo and has now started to fire in unison, we are pretty sure that KXIP is surely the most dangerous team of IPL 2020 from now on.
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