Andre Russell

Andre Russell

The points table of IPL 2019 is craziness personified. The teams ranked 4th to 8th are within 1 point of each other. Which means going into the last round literally every team had the chance of making it into the the playoffs.

On top of that, those ranked 4th to 6th all finished on 12 points. Sunrisers Hyderabad got into the playoffs by Net Run Rate, the most minuscule of differences. The team that finished 5th was Kolkata Knight Riders.

Although KKR missed out on the top four by a breath, they were considered one of the dark horses and given their tendency to dominate the top teams of the season it wasn't wrong. And Andre Russell played a major role in making that happen.

Take their match against table toppers and eventual champions Mumbai Indians. On 28th April, KKR batted first against them and generally slayed their bowlers to put on a total of 232 for 2. But no one dominated the likes of Malinga, Bumrah and Chahar more than Andre Russell, who played a memorable innings of 80 not out in just 40 balls in a stormy spell that gets talked about till this day.

The crazy 200 strike rate innings consisted of six boundaries and eight sixers. He had ensured that even before Mumbai Indians went out to bat they were already being largely counted out.

MI's response wasn't anything short of impressive though. They really went after it and despite losing wickets at regular intervals managed to reach a total of 198. It was a large victory margin for KKR but had their bowlers managed to be more economical that day, it would have greatly improved their NRR and perhaps they could have got into the top four at the end of the regular season.