|| India Correspondent ||

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) put up a great show with the ball and restricted the defending champions Mumbai Indians on 152. After that, their openers Shubman Gill (33) and Nitish Rana (57) gave a flying start as well but they failed to win the game and lost by 10 runs. Their loss didn't go well with many, including former India opener Virender Sehwag who has slammed them for the 'shameful' defeat as well.

“Eoin Morgan had given a statement that they will play that way (with postive intent) after the first game but it didn't look like that when Andre Russell and Dinesh Karthik came in to bat. The way Russell and Karthik batted, it felt like they planned to take the game till the end and win it. But that didn’t happen. The batters who came before them be it Shakib Al Hasan, Eoin Morgan, Shubman Gill or Nitish Rana all of them played with positive intent,” Sehwag told Cricbuzz.

"Either Rana or Gill should have batted till the end. They had seen what had happened in the MI innings, despite getting off to a good start they could only manage 152. Kolkata Knight Riders just lost the game which was almost won at one stage. When Russell came into bat, KKR needed 30 runs in 27-odd balls. Dinesh Karthik batted till the end but couldn’t win the game. That’s a shameful defeat," he again shared.

“The runs per ball difference wasn’t much except for the last couple of overs. We saw how to lose a game that is almost won. You hardly get any game where you are chasing 152 and you need to score 36-odd runs in 6 overs with 6-7 wickets in hand. In such scenarios, teams prefer to end the game quickly to improve their net run rate. But KKR failed to do that and hampered their net-run rate,” Virender Sehwag concluded.

KKR will next take on Virat Kohli-led RCB on Sunday.