Ahead of Thursday’s game, Shah Rukh Khan, it was learnt, had left a message for his Knights. “I’m always there for you all. Play fearlessly.”
That fearless cricket got reflected in the performances of opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz (57 off 44 balls) and Shardul Thakur (68 off 29 balls), who wasn’t just the top scorer for the Kolkata Knight Riders but also churned out a game-changing knock that propelled the team total to 204/7 after Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) won the toss and opted to bowl first at Eden Gardens.
Thereafter, spinners Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy got into action straightaway, walloping RCB’s top and middle order as the Knight Riders roared to a massive 81-run win to get off the mark in this IPL. That, in the presence of the team’s principal owner Shah Rukh, who lit up the Eden for the first time in four years.
For RCB, their Eden jinx continued. The start in their pursuit of a daunting 205-run target, though, was quite good with Virat Kohli and skipper Faf du Plessis hammering 42 off the first four overs.
Captain Nitish Rana then gave the ball to Narine in over No.5 and the distinguished off-spinner struck immediately. He pitched the ball in the right area to once again expose Kohli’s difficulties against spin.
Thereafter, it was Chakravarthy’s turn. All that the leg-spinner needed to do was get the googly right, as Du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell dragged it back onto the stumps.
Harshal Patel, too, perished in a similar fashion. So sorry was the state of affairs for RCB that even 19-year-old rookie leg-spinner Suyash Sharma (Impact Player for Venkatesh Iyer) had a field day with three wickets on IPL debut.
Earlier, the Knight Riders were wobbling at 89 with half the side back in the dugout in the 12th over. Leg-spinner Karn Sharma, who fared well against Mumbai Indians, had again given RCB the upper hand when he picked up Gurbaz and Andre Russell off consecutive deliveries.
But the knock that Shardul came up with during a sensational 103-run sixth-wicket stand with Rinku Singh (46 off 33 balls) was a huge turnaround. Shardul got off the mark in streaky fashion, but thereafter, most of the strokes that the India seamer all-rounder unleashed were solid cricketing shots, not mere slogs or wild whacks.
Flop at the top
The top order, however, continues to be a headache for the Knights. Barring Gurbaz, Iyer, who opened, fell cheaply and Mandeep (at No.3) flopped again, being easy pickings for David Willey (who replaced the injured Reece Topley, who has been ruled out of the IPL).
