By PTI
MUMBAI: His poor run of scores notwithstanding, Kolkata Knight Riders skipper Eoin Morgan remains unfazed and says it’s a “matter of time” before he fires in the ongoing IPL.
After their 18-run loss against Chennai Super Kings here on Wednesday, the World Cup-winning captain’s sequence of scores this season read 2, 7, 29 and 7.
“It’s everything’s about the process. The way I’m going about things at the moment is extremely positive. I’ve been here a long time now and I’ve been practising well and it’s a matter of time before something comes together,” he said at the post-match press conference.
KKR have got a vaunted batting line-up, but it has faltered in three matches so far in the league, even though the team came close against CSK.
In the high-scoring game, CSK posted 220/3 in 20 overs and then managed to bowl out KKR for 202, after Morgan’s team was reeling at 31 for five inside the powerplay.
“We have a very deep batting line-up, and it’s one of our strengths and we are very experienced in that middle and lower middle-order, and today we saw that.”
A fine rally, led by Andre Russell, Pat Cummins and Dinesh Karthik, helped KKR go past 200 but not the stiff victory target of 221.
Morgan said he is proud of the strong comeback by his team.
“We have to be proud of getting so close, and actually putting ourselves in a winning position. Particularly, Pat Cummins towards the end played beautiful,” Morgan said.
“It really did flip things right in our favour, but obviously, having made those five mistakes earlier did cost us.”
For KKR, the change of venue did not change their fortunes as their bowlers leaked plenty of runs after Morgan opted to field.
Morgan had made two changes in his bowling attack, bringing in rookie pacer Kamalesh Nagarkoti in place of Harbhajan Singh, while Sunil Narine played his first game of the season replacing Shakib-Al-Hasan.
While Narine returned figures of 1/34 from his four overs, Nagarkoti conceded 25 runs from his two overs.
But it was their star pacer Cummins who was the most expensive among the lot as the Aussie gave away 58 runs from his four overs, while Russell’s two overs went for 27 runs with one wicket at the death.
But Morgan said the bowlers did a reasonable job.
“I think today, upon reflection after both sides have been batted, they did a reasonable job. When you look at the position that we were in from the powerplay onwards, and only falling 20 runs short.
“You don’t have to be an optimist to think that we would have been in a good position if we had batted better at the top of the order,” he signed off.
