By B. Shrikant

Mumbai, May 16 (IANS): Three early wickets -- two of them off successive balls by Trent Boult -- pushed Lucknow Super Giants behind on the asking rate, and the mounting run rate and loss of wickets eventually led to K.L. Rahul's team's 24-run defeat against Rajasthan Royals in Match 63 of IPL 2022 on Sunday.

Chasing a par-target of 179, Lucknow Super Giants slumped to 29/3 in the sixth over. Boult made the breakthrough for Rajasthan Royals with two wickets in the first two deliveries of the third over.

Quinton de Kock (7) was the first to go as he slashed at a wide one and James Neesham took a sharp catch at point. On the next ball, Ayush Badoni (0) was out, trapped lbw by a delivery that pitched on the middle and swung in a bit.

Badoni reviewed it but could not get the umpire to change the decision.

Earlier, Rajasthan Royals too lost an early wicket when Jos Buttler was out in the third over with the score on 11. But they did not lose their next wicket -- Sanju Samson (32) -- till the ninth over, as the Rajasthan Royals skipper raised 64 runs for the second wicket with Yashasvi Jaiswal (41) to take his team to 75/1 before he got out.

In contrast, Lucknow Super Giants were reduced to 15/2 and when skipper KL Rahul was out after making 10 off 19 balls, they slumped to 29/3. They recovered a bit, thanks to a 65-run partnership between Deepak Hooda (59 off 39 balls) and Krunal Pandya (25 off 23). Marcus Stoinis too struck a 17-ball 27, but in the end that was not enough as they fell short by 24 runs.

The initial wickets meant that LSG were always behind the asking rate -- they were 34/3 at the end of the powerplay as compared to 51/1 by Rajasthan Royals. Though thanks to Hooda and Pandya, they managed to score 73/1 as compared to 79/3 by Rajasthan Royals, the gap just widened with each passing over.

And though both the teams scored nearly the same number of runs -- 48/2 for RR and 47/4 for LSG -- in the slog overs, the backlog from the powerplay and middle overs was too much to overcome and they ended their innings at 154/8 in their allotted 20 overs.