Gujarat Lions got the shock of their lives when the Kings XI Punjab were all over them at Rajkot. Chasing a moderate target of 155 and considering the form of their openers, it was thought that the target would just be a cake walk for the Lions. However, the Kings XI rose to the occasion as spinner Axar Patel bagged a hat-trick to blow the Lions out of the game.
Post the Lions’ loss, assistant coach, and former Saurashtra player Shitanshu Kotak spoke about his side’s loss. Kotak said that the Lions would have chased down the target on 9 out of 10 times. He also praised Axar Patel for his performance and said that he wasn’t worried about his side’s form.
“I don’t think the ball was spinning at all. Maybe it was a bit slow, but I wouldn’t complain about the wicket,” Kotak said. “If you look at it, there were no marks and it had a bit of grass cover as well. We lost a lot of wickets early on and that cost us the game. To chase 150 on this wicket, nine out of 10 times we would have done that.”
Kotak lauded spinner Shivil Kaushik and said that his unorthodox action made his deliveries harder to counter. “He’s got a different action than normal bowlers. People haven’t seen him much. Last game, I think he bowled reasonably well. Bowled a couple of overs, got a wicket, but unfortunately, it was a no-ball.”
While speaking about the general trend of winning and losing, Kotak said, “When you win, it makes it lot easier for the coaches to criticise. When you lose, you don’t want to criticise because the players won’t like it. You always try and cover most of the areas, and when you are winning it is a lot easier to look at those areas. Even while winning we do think about things that we haven’t done well,” he concluded.