Kolkata Knight Riders returned to winning ways when they defeated Royal Challengers Bangalore by 21 runs at the Chinnaswamy in Bangalore on Wednesday.
Chasing 201, RCB were in the race till Virat Kohli (54 off 37) stayed at the crease. But once he failed to clear the ropes and was brilliantly caught by Venkatesh Iyer in the deep in the 13th over, their challenge faded out.
This was after they lost three wickets, including Faf du Plessis and Glenn Maxwell, inside the Powerplay overs. RCB had lost to KKR at Eden Gardens too.
Bowling at the Chinnaswamy is always tough for the spinners because of the short boundaries. But KKR’s spinners did well with Varun Chakravarthy taking three wickets and Suyash Sharma claiming two. Sunil Narine, though, again had an off day.
Rinku Singh and Suyash Sharma celebrate the dismissal of Faf du Plessis, at the Chinnaswamy on Wednesday PTI
Dinesh Karthik waged a lone battle towards the end but once he departed it was curtains for RCB. Andre Russell took two wickets, including the prized scalp of Kohli.
Kohli blamed their poor fielding and soft dismissals as the reasons behind their defeat on Wednesday.
Earlier, KKR openers Jason Roy and Narayan Jagadeesan stitched together a 83-run partnership that propelled them to 200 for five.
After putting on 66 runs in the Powerplay overs, KKR added another 69 off the last five which included cameos from Rinku Singh (18 off 10) and David Wiese (12 off 3).
Iyer (31 off 26) struggled in the middle overs but Nitish Rana (48 off 21) was on song. The KKR captain survived two possible chances, but tore the attack to shreds. He ruined Harshal’s overall spell with two sixes in the 16th over. He then launched into Vijaykumar Vyshak in the next over with two boundaries and six.
Iyer and Rana, the two left-handers were alternating between boundaries and singles. Their 80-run partnership for the third wicket was based around minimising the dots. RCB’s field placing was fairly spot on forcing the two to be satisfied with the singles.
Roy (56 off 29) provided the momentum in sharp contrast to Jagadeesan. Only 16 were scored in the three overs after the Powerplay with Jagadeesan facing 12 of those 18 balls.
