“I personally feel we fell short in terms of assessing the wicket,” Iyer said after the match. “We were phenomenal in the powerplay but after that, we couldn’t capitalise, we lost consecutive wickets. We weren’t able to assess the conditions as quickly as possible. It completely changed after the powerplay and scoring runs off this wicket wasn’t easy.
“Obviously, they know conditions pretty well and they bowled according to their plan. It was a bit tacky, especially even when the hard-hitters came in, it wasn’t easy for them to go [big] right from the first ball. It changed tremendously after the powerplay. We were trying to construct our innings, didn’t go to plan. We take those learnings and move forward.”
After leaking 56 runs in the powerplay, CSK pulled things back thanks to Jadeja’s 3 for 18. Add Maheesh Theekshana and Rachin Ravindra into the mix, and the spinners combined to bowl nine overs for just 50 runs and four wickets to restrict KKR to a below-par 137 for 9.
“We were in a comfortable place at the beginning, we thought 160-170 would be a great score on this wicket. Even when they played against RCB, the conditions were fairly similar. So that was our plan but when you lose consecutive wickets, it’s difficult to carry forward momentum,” Iyer said.
“I would still say it was a 150-160 wicket. Didn’t think it was a six-hitting pitch but definitely 160.
“I wouldn’t say mine is a slow start [he was on 9 off 11 at one stage], in T20s there are times you nick off one or two balls, sometimes you need a bit of luck to get going. Today it was perfect I could take some time a bit, maybe something for experts to talk about, with my strike rate, but still good to get a win.”