Andre Russell opens up on his heartbreaking dismissal in IPL 2018

West Indies all-rounder Andre Russell recently opened up about an incident from the Indian Premier League (IPL) match featuring Kolkata Knight Riders and Sunrisers Hyderabad in the year 2018. It was all-important Qualifier 2 which the KKR narrowly lost by 14 runs.

Russell is known to take defeats close to his heart as was witnessed during this year’s IPL game against Chennai Super Kings where he scored a 22-ball 54 before being castled by Sam Curren. The KKR all-rounder was distraught with himself and did not remove his batting equipment for a long time.

During the 2018 match, KKR were nicely poised at 93-2 only to lose wickets at cluster to hand SRH a win in the knockout tie. After getting dismissed by Rashid Khan, Russell went into the shower with his cricket clothes on.

“When I got out to Rashid Khan, I got back inside and went in to shower with my cricket clothes on, My shoes and everything was wet. I was just there with the water running all over me because (the loss meant) it was basically the last game (of the season),” Andre Russell said in a video shared by KKR on YouTube.

In that crucial encounter, the star all-rounder was dismissed for just three runs. He walked into a situation tailor-made for him as KKR needed 57 runs in 33 balls. This time the destructive batter could not take his team home and believed his dismissal was due to overthinking.

Andre Russell shares an interesting thing in the match against SRH

“I didn’t get out being Dre Russ. I started to overthink the game. That was actually a ball I could have put away, and that’s the moment where I knew I had messed up. If I was still batting at the back end, we would have won comfortably,” a dejected Andre Russell said.

The Caribbean star also stated that that going to shower with cricketing clothes on was not good and he now feels embarrassed by the act.

“I was just disappointed with myself. That’s why I went into the shower with everything wet. I was happy that no one saw me that way because it was embarrassing. People would have been like – ‘Are you losing it?’ I realised (from that incident that) if a bowler feels you are scared to lift your bat, they are gonna be all over you. You have to back off a bowler by playing shots sometimes,” the West Indies all-rounder added.