A forlorn Kolkata Knight Riders captain Ajinkya Rahane said that his team’s ‘collective batting failure’ was the reason for their 8-wicket loss against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede on Monday. Kolkata were brought to their knees by MI debutant Ashwani Kumar who snapped up figures of 4/24 as the defending champions were skittled out for just 116.

“Collective batting failure. It was a good wicket bat on as I mentioned in the toss. 180-190 would have been good on this wicket. It has a very good bounce. Sometimes you have to use the pace and bounce. We got to learn really fast from this game,” Rahane said in the post-match chat.

“Couldn’t do much with the ball. They tried their best. But not much runs on the board. We kept on losing wickets. Four wickets in the powerplay. It was difficult to consolidate and get that total on the board. You need that partnership going. You need one batsman to stay till the end,” he added.

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In the match, the 23-year-old Ashwani accounted for Ajinkya Rahane (11), Rinku Singh (17), impact sub Manish Pandey (17) and Andre Russell (5) to break the Knight Riders’ back after Deepak Chahar (2/19) and Trent Boult (1/23) made early inroads in the powerplay. With that stellar effort, Ashwani became the first Indian to take four wickets in his maiden IPL outing.

KKR had a forgettable start when their openers Quinton de Kock (1) and Sunil Narine (0) fell inside the first two overs and by the end of the powerplay, the visitors had limped to 41 for four.

On a fresh Wankhede Stadium pitch which offered bounce and swing with the new ball, MI bowlers capitalised on lack of application shown by KKR batters. Angkrish Raghuvanshi top-scored for KKR with 26 off 16 balls.

Chasing, Mumbai rode on Ryan Rickelton’s unbeaten 62 as they chased down the target in 12.5 overs.

(With agency inputs)