Kolkata Knight Riders thrashed Royal Challengers Bengaluru by seven wickets at the M Chinnawamy Stadium. It was a day full of fireworks as Virat Kohli gave the hosts a brilliant start, but KKR bowlers showed a lot of courage and bounced back towards the backend, bringing the momentum back to the visitors. Harshit Rana and Anukul Roy were incredible, to say the least as RCB posted 182 runs in the first innings.
Kohli made 83 runs off 59 deliveries but none of the other batters supported him in the middle, which complicated things for RCB. Cameron Green and Dinesh Karthik played quick cameos but RCB failed to build a partnership, which helped KKR restrict them to 182 runs.
When it came to the chase, Sunil Narine and Phil Salt gave a breathtaking start to KKR. Salt smashed 18 runs in Mohammed Siraj’s first over and after which, Narine took care of the business. The veteran all-rounder smacked 47 runs off 22 deliveries to set the tone for KKR. After he got back to the pavilion, Venkatesh Iyer took over the responsibility and hit a brilliant half-century.
Losing skipper Faf du Plessis said:
Strange one, first innings we thought that the wicket was two-paced, you could see that when the guys bowled the cutters, the guys really struggled. We thought it was a decent score knowing that it gets a little easier in the evening, there was a little bit of dew coming in. Looking at the way we batted in the first innings, even Virat was struggling to hit the ball due to the lack of pace. You can always say after the game, try one or two things but the way the two of them (Narine and Slat) batted, they put pressure on our bowlers. They hit strong cricket shots and pretty much took the game away. With Narine there, you can’t go to spin, you want to use pace upfront. That’s also a really good match-up for Salt and the way he plays. They were excellent, really broke the game in the first six overs. Spinning options with Maxi and finger-spinning can be effective here, but at night there wasn’t too much spin, With left-hand, right-hand combination, it’s one of those things, you can bowl a spinner. We saw when Venky was playing, it felt like an easy hit against left-arm spin. Ideally you want someone who can spin the ball both ways but with the set-up of our team tonight, we didn’t have that option. (On Vyshak) Very good, he hasn’t had opportunities. We had a look in the first innings and thought about bringing in Karn Sharma. But we felt someone who could bowl really good slower balls is probably the most difficult bowler to face on this pitch. Dre Russ bowled 80% of his balls cutters. We took some learnings from that and he was the best bowler of the evening.
