new delhi andre russell has taken the indian premier league ipl 2019 by a storm and among the many admirers of his bighitting prowess is the head coach of kolkata knight riders kkr jacques kallis points table i schedulein six matches so far the west indies allrounder has scored 257 runs in 121 balls giving him a staggering strike rate of 21239 and his five innings of 50 48 62 48 and 49 have come at an average of 12850 but what those numbers dont highlight is that most of those knocks have turned hopeless situations for kkr into winning moments the most remarkable aspect of andre russells tournament so far has been the consistency of his batting kallis wrote in his column for the times of india on friday it is hard enough to score runs on a regular basis but to do so in the style he bats is incrediblekallis went on to add that there is certain method to russells madness without which playing matchwinning knocks consistently is not be possible in pressure situations that t20 cricket often throws up it is easy to think his approach to batting is high risk and impulsive but such a run of consistency would be impossible if he was just swinging at everything he actually has a finelytuned method and understands his game and technique superbly bowlers just need to work out where to bowl to him now because he cant actually hit every ball for four or six despite how it looks the former south africa allrounder wrotekkr have won four of their six matches so far to sit at second position on the points table and will be at home on friday to host delhi capitals after being on the road for the past two weeks russell was at the heart of the wins but hell be the first person to tell you its a team game all in all it was an excellent road trip with some hard fought and valuable victories in the two weeks we were away from home we played some smart thinking cricket and made a lot of good decisions at vital times kallis added kkr lost their last match against the chennai super kings in which their batting lineup crashed except russell who scored an unbeaten halfcentury we didnt do ourselves justice in the last game against chennai but that can happen from time to time its hard to be at your best at the end throughout the tournament particularly at the end of a run of away matches perhaps some of us were distracted by thoughts of going home kallis saidthe good news is that we have a couple of home games now and the reality is that other teams find it hard to perform at their best against us at the eden gardens as i have said many times the support of the crowd is like having an extra fielderwe also have a lengthy break after the next two