IPL 2024: Sunil Narine credits KKR mentor Gautam Gambhir after smashing maiden IPL hundred

Sunil Narine scored his maiden T20 hundred in his 504th match.

Sunil Narine of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) stole the show during his team’s batting innings in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 match against Rajasthan Royals (RR) on April 16, 2024.

It is the battle of the top two ranked teams in IPL 2024 points table and RR captain Sanju Samson won the toss and chose to bat first. KKR opened with Sunil Narine and Phil Salt and despite getting a lifeline, Phil Salt was caught and bowled by Avesh Khan for 10 runs.

Then Angkrish Raghuvanshi (30) and Sunil Narine added a valuable 85 runs for the second wicket, as Narine started hammering the RR bowlers to all parts of the Eden Gardens. Apart from him, Rinku Singh made 20* in 8 balls as KKR made 223/6 in 20 overs.

However, the KKR innings belonged to Sunil Narine. Narine, who is playing his 504th T20 match, finally scored his maiden T20 hundred. He scored 109 runs with 13 fours and 6 sixes.

With Gautam Gambhir coming back, he gave me the confidence: Sunil Narine

In the mid-innings interview with the commentators, Sunil Narine was ecstatic with his century and credited KKR mentor Gautam Gambhir, who had backed him to open the innings for them. It was under Gambhir’s captaincy, Narine had previously opened for KKR with Chris Lynn and had good success.

Narine said: “(At the start of the season if anyone had told him he’d be in the race for the Orange cap) I would have taken it as a joke because I haven’t opened in such a long time or done much with the bat in the years past.

On opening this the batting this year, with GG (Gambhir) coming back, he gave me the confidence and his assurance that I’ll open the batting. The job is just to go out there and try to give a good start, whatever the situation is, still keep going because if you try to face dot balls in the powerplay, it could hurt you in the backend. So just go there and try to give your team a good start. We have an understanding about it, it’s not going to be easy (bowling here), we have to make use of the powerplay, pick up early wickets, and make sure that we control in the middle and try to restrict them.” Narine added.

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