IPL 2018, KKR vs RR: 3 thing you might have missed 

A relatively calm chase by Kolkata Knight Riders thanks to brilliant captain's knock from Dinesh Karthik, breaking the winning streak of Rajasthan Royals in their own backyard. Batting first, Rajasthan Royals never got the momentum to their innings and scrambled to 160 in relatively good batting conditions.

Dinesh Karthik was really smart with his bowling changes, opening with spinners and bowling them in the powerplay and finishing the chase with the help of an excellent partnership with Nitish Rana, who had a good game with bat and ball and winning consecutive man of the match award. Sportkeeda takes a look at the three unnoticed things from the match which had a considerable impact on the end result.

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#1 Short's struggle

One of the success stories of last year's Big Bash League mustering 572 runs opening for Hobart Hurricanes, D'Arcy Short failed to replicate his success in the subcontinental conditions.

Despite scoring a respectable 44 runs, he consumed a lot of dot balls at the start of the innings and struggled against the spinners. Dinesh Karthik's smart captaincy to open with spinners at both ends didn't help his cause.

However, he showed some promise at the latter part of his innings dispatching Mavi for huge six off a short ball and scoring few boundaries but still ended up playing run ball innings leaving power hitters with the likes of Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler, few deliveries to make a difference.

#2 Promotion for Tripathi

Pushed down the order to accommodate D'Arcy Short at the opener's slot, Rahul Tripathi batted way down to his liking until this match, was promoted ahead of Ben Stokes by Rajasthan Royal's think tank at No 4. There were rumors of Rahul Tripathi returning to his favorite spot where he plundered 400 runs for Pune last year, with Heinrich Klassen playing ahead of D'Arcy Short in the middle order. But they persisted with the same winning team and altered their batting order which gave mixed results in the end.

Rahul Tripathi managed only 15 runs off 11 deliveries despite looking comfortable against the spinners scoring a couple of boundaries.

#3 Underbowled pacers

With the opposition team boasting of power hitting overseas talents, Dinesh Karthik devised a strategy to bombard them with spinners at different stages of the game. He even opened the innings at both ends with spinners and kept a lid on the rate until Ajinkya Rahane went mayhem against Sunil Narine smashing four boundaries in the fourth over. He even bowled a part-timer Nitish Rana and got rewarded with the wickets of openers Ajinkya Rahane and D'Arcy Short.

Only 6 overs were bowled by pacers and was shared between Tom Curran and Shivam Mavi with the former bowling only couple. Andre Russell didn't bowl a single over and was not needed with the bat thanks to a brilliant partnership from Dinesh Karthik and Nitish Rana.