RR had to beat MI to get into the playoffs, and they did, thanks in the main to Jofra Archer, who starred with bat and all. Here, though, it’s what he did with the ball that matters more: 3 for 17. Rohit Sharma and Naman Dhir were knocked over in the powerplay and Hardik Pandya was sent back later in the game.
That lifted Archer straight to No. 3, past Anshul Kamboj of Chennai Super Kings (CSK), Rashid Khan of Gujarat Titans (GT) and Eshan Malinga of Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), and only behind Bhuvneshwar Kumar of Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) and GT’s Kagiso Rabada, who both have 24 wickets each. Archer has 21.
Bhuvneshwar, Rabada, Archer and Rashid now have the opportunity to fight it out for the big prize at the end of the playoffs.
The two matches on Sunday pitted three teams that haven’t had too many individual batting stars this season, but Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was in action in the afternoon game and KL Rahul was around for the night game. One of them did well to finish his season on a high; the other faltered, but has more chances to lift his aggregate.
First up was Sooryavanshi, against MI, but Deepak Chahar had his number early, and the four runs Sooryavanshi scored only took his tally up marginally, to 583. At that point, he was at No. 4 on the run-scorers’ table, behind the GT duo of B Sai Sudharsan (638 runs) and Shubman Gill (616 runs), and SRH’s Heinrich Klaasen, who has 606.
But Rahul wasn’t going away from the tournament without making a statement: he made 60 in 30 balls against KKR. That took his tally to 593 runs for the season, past a host of batters, including Sooryavanshi, and gave him the fourth spot.
