KKR gets bullied by Mumbai Indians once again

Victory for KKR had looked like a formality against their nemesis Mumbai Indians when their openers Nitish Rana and Shubhman Gill had walloped 72 runs in 9 overs before Gill fell chasing just 152.

But KKR then created Hara-kiri when they paid the price for playing the gung-ho style of cricket which England has played under Eoin Morgan for five years and collapsed to 122/5 and in the end fell short by 10 runs to loose from a winning position.

Now one can say KKR paid the price for being too aggressive but you can’t rule out the fact that KKR are finding different ways of losing to Arch Rivals Mumbai Indians for over a decade now. Their record against Mumbai Indians is now 22 losses to just 6 wins in 28 games which is abysmal and KKR team owner Shah Rukh Khan summed up with a tweet that it was pretty disappointing performance and he apologized to the fans for this loss.

Now what happens to KKR when playing against Mumbai Indians which is not the case when they play other oppositions? Gautam Gambhir under whom KKR has won the two IPL titles had said that Mumbai Indians take out their "A" game when they play against KKR. But is not the other way that KKR choke against Mumbai Indians time and again. History shows that once a team dominates another team for a while it becomes difficult for the loosing team to come out of that losing streak. There was a time after the Great Javed Miandad had hit that heart breaking six at Sharjah, Indian team was finding it very difficult to beat the Pakistan team in the 90's and a there was a mental block whenever they played Pakistan till Indian won the T20 World Cup. Similarly Pak team still can't find a way to beat Ind in a world cup game from 1992 as it goes in to a negative frame whenever a world cup game happens against Ind.

The sight of ROHIT Sharma’s Mumbai Indians seems to bully the KKR team time and again and it will take a something special from KKR to get out of this rut, not sure when it will happen. But unless they find their way past Mumbai Indians, the third title for KKR is so near yet so far.