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#4 Openers failed to deliver
It is very vital for any match and any team, especially in a huge run chase to have their openers firing from the word go. Chasing 219, it was essential that Punjab's openers took responsibility and gave their team a solid platform to build on.
It would have been easy for Punjab even if one of their openers scored big, as David Miller and Mayank Agarwal were in form and got a 74 run partnership, while even Mandeep Singh helped in with a 15 ball 33.
However, the openers failed to make it big as both Chris Gayle and KL Rahul got out within the powerplay with scores of just 20 and 1 respectively. It created a huge impact on Punjab's innings as the middle order batsmen could not play their shots freely and were constantly under the pressure of not losing wickets. Had one of these two stepped up and gotten a big knock, KXIP could have chased the target as the pitch was a lively one and Kolkata's score was just above par.
Punjab should learn from this match and make amends to win their next encounter against Rohit Sharma led Mumbai Indians if they want to remain on the top 4 teams in the table.
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