Riding half a century from Chris Gayle and Mandeep Singh, Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) recorded a comfortable eight wicket victory over Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at Sharjah Cricket Stadium on Monday. Courtesy of their fifth trot victory, the team led by KL Rahul has moved to the top half of the eight-team table, displacing KKR from fourth place. Chasing a modest total of 150 on a batting-friendly Sharjah track, KL Rahul and Mandeep Singh gave their team a solid start by adding 47 runs to the opening wicket.
KKR’s mysterious spinner Varun Chakravarthy celebrated his first call-up to the Indian team by catching KL Rahul’s leg earlier and giving his team a major breakthrough. After that, Gayle teamed up with Mandeep Singh in the middle and took the game away from KKR, putting up a position of exactly 100 runs for the second wicket.
Gayle’s aggressive approach allowed Mandeep to take his time in the middle and build his innings and the Punjab hitter, who lost his father last Friday, did it flawlessly, scoring 66 instead of 56 balls.
Previously, KXIP skipper KL Rahul won the draw and, with the dew factor in mind, invited KKR to bat. Eoin Morgan’s team suffered a major blow as they lost the last match hero Nitish Rana on the second ball of the inning to a duck. He came out trying to sweep up a Glenn Maxwell delivery but ended up hitting Chris Gayle directly in the hands.
The bad start went further downhill, as they lost Rahul Tripathi and Dinesh Karthik in Mohammed Shami’s first over. After that, Shubman Gill and Morgan led KKR’s counterattack when they finished Powerplay at 54/3.
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Shubman Gill broke four sixes in his 57-run knock, while Morgan had just two sixes but hit at a much higher strike rate than his partner at the other end. Ravi Bishnoi, who spun KXIP’s leg, struck in the 10th to break the dangerous-looking association, ditching Morgan, who had scored 40 on just 25 balls.
After Morgan’s ejection, the KXIP bowlers dominated the play and stopped the flow of runs, forcing the hitters to make mistakes. Except for Ferguson, all other lower-order hitters became a sorry figure for KKR and were restricted to a below-average total of 149/9 in 20 overs.
Shami was the bowlers’ choice for KXIP when he returned with 3/35 figures on his four-plus spell, while Chris Jordan and Ravi Bishnoi collected two wickets apiece.
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