Despite giving Rajasthan a huge target of 218 runs, Kolkata were on the verge of victory very easily due to the responsible batting of Finch and Iyer. But the batting of all the other players on the team was very weak. The team's run collection of 7 batsmen was below 10. And four batsmen returned to the dressing room with zero runs. With players like Cummins and Narine batting a little more responsibly, Kolkata could have easily won today.
As we have already seen till now, one-man armies are no longer effective and teams that are overdependent on one or two players have fared poorly so far in the IPL. The same goes for KKR as well. Shreyas Iyer and Aaron Finch took them to the brink of victory, but none of the other players offered any support for them. And once Shreyas got out, it was all over for the KKR. In particular, I am disturbed with the lack of form from Venkatesh Iyer. He's one of the most promising allrounders and considered by many as a good replacement for Hardik Pandya. And apart from one match, Pat Cummins has also not performed up to his calibre.
Not only Venkatesh Iyer but Ruturaj Gaikwad, Paddikal, Nitish Rana, Mayank Aggarwal etc are also struggling with the bat and similarly Varun Chakaravarthy etc struggling with the ball. Each one of em took IPL by surprise in previous seasons but losing their marbles so far. New local and uncapped talent is filling the gap in both department, which is exciting to watch.
Match up is kinda important in T-20 due to its nature. Pat Cummins is clean striker when playing against pace but he always struggle against spin, not just IPL but in international matches too.