Kamal Ghorui
KL Rahul added another major milestone to his IPL career during Delhi Capitals’ clash against Kolkata Knight Riders at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Friday.Although Rahul’s innings ended on 23, the Delhi Capitals batter entered the record books by becoming the first player in IPL history to score more than 1000 runs for three different franchises.
Rahul has now aggregated 2548 runs for Punjab Kings, 1410 runs for Lucknow Super Giants and 1002 runs for Delhi Capitals. The achievement underlines his consistency across different teams and batting roles over the years in the tournament.The wicket came in the final ball of the fifth over when Kartik Tyagi deceived Rahul with a slower delivery. Attempting to loft the ball inside-out over cover, Rahul failed to get to the pitch and sliced it high towards mid-on, where Cameron Green completed a well-judged catch.Despite the early dismissal, Rahul also became the quickest batter to reach the 1000-run milestone for Delhi Capitals. He achieved the feat in just 23 innings, comfortably surpassing the previous record jointly held by JP Duminy and Rishabh Pant, who had both taken 35 innings.Earlier in the evening, KKR captain Ajinkya Rahane won the toss and opted to bowl first. Kolkata retained the same playing XI, while Delhi brought in Mukesh Kumar and Vipraj Nigam in place of T Natarajan and Karun Nair.Teams:Delhi Capitals: Axar Patel (c), Pathum Nissanka, KL Rahul (wk), Nitish Rana, Sameer Rizvi, Tristan Stubbs, Ashutosh Sharma, Vipraj Nigam, Mitchell Starc, Lungi Ngidi and Mukesh Kumar.Kolkata Knight Riders: Ajinkya Rahane (c), Angkrish Raghuvanshi (wk), Cameron Green, Rovman Powell, Manish Pandey, Rinku Singh, Sunil Narine, Anukul Roy, Kartik Tyagi, Vaibhav Arora and Varun Chakaravarthy.
