KKR won the game with five wickets in hand and 3.2 overs to spare. The win saw them leapfrog from eighth to fifth in the IPL 2021 points table.
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Kolkata Knight Riders’ (KKR) fans heaved a sigh of relief as their side finally registered their second victory of the 2021 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL 2021) on Monday. The win came against Punjab Kings (PBKS) at the Motera stadium in Ahmedabad. KKR captain Eoin Morgan played a captain’s knock as he saw his side get the two pints with a brilliant knock that saw him reach 7,000 T20 runs. He became the fourth England player to achieve the milestone. The KKR bowlers displayed a masterful performance as they restricted KL Rahul’s men to 123/9 at the end of their 20 overs.
There was a scare at the beginning of the KKR innings as the purple and gold lost three wickets for 17 runs. Nitish Rana, Shubman Gill, and Sunil Narine fell cheaply but Morgan and Rahul Tripathi stabilized the KKR innings.
That winning feeling ??#PBKSvKKR #KKRHaiTaiyaar #IPL2021pic.twitter.com/0N7McIjNxL
— KolkataKnightRiders (@KKRiders) April 26, 2021
The skipper stuck around till the end and saw his side home. KKR won the game with five wickets in hand and 3.2 overs to spare. The win saw them leapfrog from eighth to fifth in the points table.
Opener Rana went back to the pavilion without troubling the scorers while his opening partner Gill scored only 9 runs off 8 deliveries. Narine was also dismissed for a duck.
However, Tripathi played a fantastic knock of 41 from 32 deliveries while Morgan made 47 off 40. Dinesh Karthik hit the winning runs as he scored 12 runs off six deliveries.
The PBKS bowlers had an uneventful day but they still delivered a decent, yet losing, performance. Moises Henriques, Mohammed Shami, Deepak Hooda and Arshdeep Singh picked one wicket each while Andre Russell was run out by Arshdeep. Ravi Bishnoi took a marvelous catch to dismiss Sunil Narine.
KKR’s bowling attack did a fabulous job of restricting the PBKS batters to a humble 123 runs. Pacer Prasidh Krishna was the pick of the bowlers as he picked three wickets for 30 runs in his four overs.
Narine also had an impactful day with the ball as he picked two wickets for 22 runs off his four overs. Pat Cummins also picked up a couple of wickets but proved to be expensive as he conceded 31 runs in three overs.
Varun Chakravarthy and Shivam Mavi picked one wicket each with Mavi conceding only 13 runs in four overs and Chakravarthy conceding 24 in four overs. Tripathi took a splendid catch to dismiss Mayank Agarwal.
None of the PBKS batters could quite accelerate as was necessary apart from Englishman Chris Jordan. He played a crucial cameo of 30 runs off 18 deliveries, without which PBKS might not have crossed the 110-run mark.
Rahul, Mayank, Nicholas Pooran and Shahrukh Khan all got decent starts but failed to convert them into a big score.
Rahil scored 19 runs off 20 deliveries, Mayank made 31 off 34, Pooram made 19 off the same amount of deliveries, and Shahrukh made 13 off 14 deliveries. The team’s batting display will be of grave concern for skipper KL Rahul going forward in IPL 2021.
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