Ten-run win pushes Kolkata Knight Riders upto third

Kolkata Knight Riders defeated the Chennai Super Kings by 10 runs in the Indian Premier League (IPL) yesterday at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi, moving up to third in the points table.

The Knight Riders defended their total of 167 with some tight bowling towards the latter stages of the Super Kings innings, with the wicket of opener Shane Watson proving to be the turning point.

The Super Kings had reached 101 for the loss of two wickets when Sunil Narine had Watson trapped leg before wicket at the start of the 14th over, and a tottering Dhoni, who made just 11 off 12 balls, meant Chennai could not deliver the firepower to take them to victory.

Sam Curran scored 17 off 11 but his dismissal at the start of the 18th over, with the Super Kings needing another 39 runs to win, left Chennai shorthanded down the final stretch of the chase.

Ravindra Jadeja scored 23 off 8 balls, but 14 of those runs came in the last three balls of the innings, effectively flattering the final margin of defeat. Earlier, Rahul Tripathi justified his promotion to the top of the order by smashing a 51-ball 81 (8x4, 3x6) to guide Kolkata Knight Riders to a respectable score.

Chennai though came back strongly from the half-way stage led by leg-spinner Karn Sharma’s brilliant spell (4-0-25-2) in the middle overs to pull things back to finish strongly. In the last ten overs, the Super Knigs conceded only 74 runs to bowl out Kolkata at the end of 20 overs.

Electing to bat, KKR was in a strong position at 93 for two at the half-way stage, led by Tripathi’s blitz who got to his half-century with a cut over backward point off Bravo in just 31 balls.

The batsman was given a reprieve on 58 when Curran missed an easy run out off his own bowling at the non-striker’s’ end.

Chennai’s other medium pacers Shardul Thakur (2/28), Curran (2/26) and Dwayne Bravo (3/37) came up with impressive bowling performance sharing seven wickets between them in the back end of the innings to steal the momentum away from KKR.