Mumbai: Bollywood star Athiya Shetty made her first appearance at an Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 game this season, turning up at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur on Wednesday to watch her husband KL Rahul’s Lucknow Super Giants in action against the Rajasthan Royals. Rahul and LSG both didn’t disappoint Athiya as they stunned IPL 2022 runners-up Royals to emerge victorious by 10 runs.
Athiya, who celebrated a low-key 31st birthday of husband KL Rahul just a day before the IPL 2023 match, was delighted to watch the LSG skipper in action as he put on 82 runs for the 1st wicket with Kyle Mayers. Rahul scored 39 off 32 balls which included a 103m six off Rajasthan Royals leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal as well.
Off the fifth ball of the 9th over of the game, KL Rahul slog swept Chahal over mid-wicket for a massive six and Athiya Shetty couldn’t keep calm and was seen loudly cheering for her husband as the cameraman panned on her.
Royals did well to restrict LSG to 154 after the solid opening stand between Rahul and Mayers, who hit his third fifty of the IPL 2023. But LSG managed to restrict Sanju Samson’s side to 144 for 6 to post their fourth win of the season.
‘Sanju Samson run-out was turning point’
Rahul felt that the turning point of the match was Samson’s run out for 2 after the Royals had got off to a solid start thanks to openers Yashasvi Jaiswal and Jos Buttler. “That Samson run out and two wickets falling back-to-back lets you to come back into the game. RR’s top three-four are really strong and our plan was to get them out early, and it came via a run-out today,” Rahul said at the post-match presentation.
The LSG skipper had played out a maiden over to Royals pacer Trent Boult to start the match but revealed that the par-score for the Jaipur pitch was around 165. “At the 10-over mark, the message we sent out was that maybe 165 is a good total, so, let us try to get to 160. Did not have to set ourselves very high. They are a quality team, they have good bowlers. We fell 10 runs short maybe but we made it up with the ball in the end. There was no dew and that was fair on both teams,” Rahul added.
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