Varun and Suyash wreck RCB's chase again
Kolkata Knight Riders 200 for 5 (Roy 56, Rana 48) beat Royal Challengers Bangalore 179 for 8 (Kohli 54, Varun 3-27) by 21 runs
It took Kolkata Knight Riders eight games to finally produce a cohesive team performance. They excelled with bat and ball, and were the better team in the field too, as they achieved only their third win of the season. It was the perfect way for them to start the second half of the league stage, beating Royal Challengers Bangalore for the second time in the season.
KKR's win was set up by their new opener Jason Roy, who laid the base for their total of 200 by smacking 56 off 29 balls. Nitish Rana pumped 48 off 21 to keep the momentum going through the middle overs, and Rinku Singh (18 off 10) and David Wiese (12 off 3) put on the finishing touches.
RCB's chase, though, was on while Virat Kohli was out there. He scored 54 off 37 to keep them on course. However, regular wickets from Suyash Sharma, Varun Chakravarthy and Andre Russell kept pegging them back, and RCB eventually ran out of gas and fell 21 short.
Suyash, Varun pull it back for KKR
Kohli and Faf du Plessis hammered 30 runs in two overs from Vaibhav Arora and Umesh Yadav to start the chase, forcing Rana to bring on spin in the third over. He chose to go to his least experienced spinner - Suyash Sharma - ahead of Sunil Narine and Varun, and was rewarded with du Plessis holing out to long on second ball.
While Kohli kept finding the boundary, he failed to find support in the powerplay with Shahbaz Ahmed falling lbw to Suyash, while Glenn Maxwell holed out off Varun. With RCB three down in the powerplay, Kohli and Mahipal Lomror stabilised the chase by running hard and taking on Sunil Narine.
Rana then went back to Varun, who had Lomror caught in the deep, and when Kohli was superbly caught on 54 by Venkatesh Iyer, diving to his left at deep midwicket in the 13th over, KKR were decidedly ahead in the contest. The dismissals of Wanindu Hasaranga and Dinesh Karthik in the space of four balls ensured RCB had no way back and Kohli, who was standing in as captain for du Plessis once again, said they had "gifted" the victory to KKR.
Rana makes RCB pay
Kohli's scathing post-game comments were largely because of RCB's fielding. They put down a tough caught-and-bowled chance off Roy, but it was the two reprieves that Rana received that really cost RCB. According to Cricday's Luck Index the two drops, by Mohammed Siraj in the 13th over and Harshal Patel in the 15th, cost RCB a total of 29 runs.
The first chance came when Rana was on 5 off 5 deliveries and then second when he was on 19 off 12. He ended up scoring 48 off 21 balls. Rana's innings included three fours and four sixes and it allowed KKR to wrest the momentum after sluggish innings from N Jagadeesan and Venkatesh.
Roy sets Knight Riders up
It was Roy's innings, however, that set the tone for KKR's night. After struggling for runs from their opening partnership all season, KKR finally had a strong start and it was all Roy. He smashed four sixes in the fifth over from left-arm spinner Shahbaz Ahmed to power them to 66 for 0 in the powerplay.
So even though Vijaykumar Vyshak dismissed N Jagadeesan and Roy in the same over, KKR had a platform to build on, and this time Rana and the rest ensured that it was not wasted.