Lucknow Super Giants beat the Rajasthan Royals by 10 runs as IPL returned to the Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur, after four years on Wednesday. After being invited to bat first, Lucknow first posted 154/7 with Kyle Mayers top-scoring for them with 51 off 42 balls. In response, Rajasthan could only muster 144 with Avesh Khan emerging as the pick of the bowlers, returning with figures of 3 for 25. Marcus Stoinis was also spendid with the ball and took 2 wickets for 28 runs as LSG equalled RR on points with their fourth win in six matches.
Notably, LSG started off slowly managing only 37 runs in the first 6 overs even attracting a bit of a criticism online. However, as it turned out perhaps they had got the measure of the pitch early and eventually gave themselves a good chance to with a fighting total. Other than Mayers' half-century, KL Rahul scored 39 off 32. However, it was really down to Nicholas Pooran's 29 off 20 and Stoinis contribution of 21 off 16 balls before his heroics with the ball.
In response, Rajasthan were in the run-chase especially the way they started with Yashasvi Jaiswal and Jos Buttler putting on 87 runs for the opening wicket. However, the wicket of Jaiswal followed by the run out of Sanju Samson and the dismissal of Buttler opened things up for Lucknow. In the end, Devdutt Padikkal tried hard and Lucknow also were imposed a fielding penalty having to field one extra fielder inside the 30-yard circle for the final over but Avesh Khan held his nerve to allow LSG to taste a win.
Both Lucknow and Rajasthan are now tied on points with four win from six matches but Rajasthan have a better net run rate of +1.043 compared to that of Lucknow +0.709 which keeps them at the top of the points tally in IPL 2023.
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