Buttler’s unbeaten 107 leads Royals to victory off final ball

Jos Buttler hit an unbeaten 107 to lead Rajasthan Royals to a thrilling final-ball win in pursuit of 224 against Kolkata Knight Riders at Eden Gardens on Tuesday.

England’s white-ball captain struggled for his touch early on but burst into life when the seventh wicket fell.

He faced every ball in the last three overs and scored the single needed from the last ball to seal a two-wicket win.

The Royals chase was the jointhighest in the IPL and puts Royals top of the table.

Buttler, who scored 100 not out against Royal Challengers Bangalore 10 days ago, edged and mistimed his way to 42 from his first 33 balls - and the Royals needed 96 from the last 36 balls as wickets fell around him.

Rovman Powell struck an important 26 from 13 balls but he was trapped lbw in the 17th over by Sunil Narine - who had hit a brilliant 109 in Kolkata’s 223-6 leaving the Royals seven down and Buttler without any frontline batters to partner.

Buttler started the 18th by hitting Mitchell Starc for a straight six - and later in the over, his England team-mate Phil Salt, Kolkata’s wicketkeeper, let one through his gloves from the Australian left-armer, which ran away for five crucial wides.

Trent Boult sacrificed his wicket with a run out to allow Buttler to keep the strike throughout Starc’s over and the opener hit seamer Harshit Rana for two more sixes in the 19th to leave nine runs required from the last.

A six from the first ball took Buttler to three figures from 55 balls before he turned down singles from the next three balls to protect No.10 Avesh Khan.

With three needed from two balls, Buttler raced back for two and flicked the final delivery off his pads to complete the win.

Earlier, as good as Buttler was, though, Narine just had less support from his team-mates.

Though known as a powerplay aggressor, he let Phil Salt and Angkrish

Raghuvanshi take the lead early on, before blooming in the middle overs against the spinners. He smacked R Aswhin for two sixes, and Yuzvendra Chahal for three, as both those bowlers conceded in excess of 12 an over.

It was Narine’s fours, though, that truly powered his innings. He hit 13 of them, all but four of them on the off side.

Although Narine had been impressive through the middle overs, he also accelerated towards the death. He hit 35 runs off the last 14 balls he faced.

Most impressively, he motored from 79 to KKR’s third IPL hundred in the space of one Chahal over, in which he crashed two sixes and two fours.

Rinku Singh provided some closing fireworks to the KKR innings, but Narine’s best stand had been the 85-run second-wicket partnership with Raghuvanshi, who made only 30 of those runs. Such was Narine’s early dominance.

Later, Shreyas Iyer, the Kolkata Knight Riders captain, was fined after his team maintained a slow over-rate against Rajasthan Royals in their last-ball defeat at Eden Gardens on Tuesday. As it was KKR’s first offence of the season in six games - Iyer was fined INR 12 lakh.

Brief scores: Kolkata Knight Riders 223/6 (Sunil Narine 109, Angkrish Raghuvanshi 30; Avesh Khan 2-35, Sen 2-46) lost to Rajasthan Royals 224/8 (Jos Buttler 107*, Riyan Parag 34; Sunil Narine 2-30, Varun Chakravarthy 2-36, Harshit Rana 2-45).