After they shared six wickets between them, KKR’s openers hunted down the target with ease
Kolkata Knight Riders 94 for 1 (Gill 48, Iyer 41*) beat Royal Challengers Bangalore 92 (Padikkal 22, Russell 3-9, Varun 3-13) by nine wickets
Both teams had played seven games before the IPL was put on hold in May, with contrasting fortunes: Royal Challengers Bangalore had five wins and Kolkata Knight Riders had five losses. On Monday night in Abu Dhabi, though, it looked like the two teams had swapped their fates, with Knight Riders’ bowlers putting in a clinical performance to bowl Royal Challengers out for just 92, their third-lowest while batting first in the IPL. The big three of Virat Kohli, Glenn Maxwell and AB de Villiers fell for 5, 10 and 0 respectively.
Once Royal Challengers were reduced to 63 for 5, mystery spinners Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine kept the middle and lower order guessing with their guile and turn.
Knight Riders will be hoping their dominant nine-wicket win will turn their tournament around, pushing them up to fifth on the points table from second-to-last. Their top order chased the paltry target down rather easily, with Shubman Gill and debutant Venkatesh Iyer put on an opening stand of 82 in just 9.1 overs.
How Royal Challengers came a cropper
If the Royal Challengers batters looked scratchy and rusty, the Knight Riders bowlers were right on the money. They bowled in the corridor, surprised the batters with pace and bounce on a spongy pitch, beat them with mystery spin, and barely offered any room for the big shots.
Kohli struck the first four of the match with a spectacular punch through the covers but he was dismissed next ball by an inducker from Prasidh Krishna which beat his flick. Kohli used the review, but the umpire had got it right and his team’s only batting review was gone in the second over. Devdutt Padikkal struck three fours but KS Bharat, debuting for Royal Challengers, struggled for fluency with lack of timing and placement. Once Padikkal edged Lockie Ferguson behind and Bharat pulled to deep square leg, all hopes rested on the duo of de Villiers and Maxwell to salvage the innings.
But Andre Russell extinguished those hopes by slipping in a leg-stump yorker to bowl de Villiers for a golden duck, after he had mostly been sending down short balls. The runs dried up further and Maxwell’s frustration was evident as he crawled to 10 off 16 without a single boundary.
Full report to follow
Vishal Dikshit is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo
Source: ESPN Crickinfo