Samson, Jurel ace chase to put Rajasthan Royals on the cusp of qualification

Led by unbeaten half-centuries by Sanju Samson and Dhruv Jurel, Rajasthan Royals continued their victory march in IPL 2024, picking up an eighth win from nine games. The duo added an unbeaten 121-run stand for the fourth wicket to help Royals beat Lucknow Super Giants by seven wickets in Lucknow, overhauling the total with an over to spare.

With this win, table toppers Royals have taken a six-point lead over the second-best side in the competition. LSG, on the other hand, are still in the top four but only marginally ahead of Delhi Capitals on Net Run Rate.

In what was a break from the 200-plus run-fests, Lucknow Super Giants failed to take advantage of the century stand between KL Rahul and Deepak Hooda, being restricted to 196 for 5. Captain Rahul even admitted after the game that his team were at least 20 runs short. Interestingly, LSG found much of their acceleration through the middle overs, but struggled to keep that scoring tempo in the powerplay and the death. They were able to hit only two boundaries in the last five overs of the innings. In fact, six-hitting was also quite limited throughout the innings, with Rahul hitting the only two sixes the team managed. RR, in contrast, cleared the ropes nine times.

Brief Scores:
Lucknow Super Giants 196/5 in 20 overs (KL Rahul 76, Deepak Hooda 50; Trent Boult 1-41, Sandeep Sharma 2-31, Avesh Khan 1-42, Ravichandran Ashwin 1-39) lost to Rajasthan Royals 199/3 in 19 overs (Yashasvi Jaiswal 24, Jos Buttler 34, Sanju Samson 71*, Dhruv Jurel 52*; Yash Thakur 1-50, Marcus Stonis 1-03, Amit Mishra 1-20) by 7 wickets

(Cricbuzz)