Yet another clash in the season went down as a one-sided affair in Indian Premier League’s (IPL) edition 2018. However, the fans of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will take this contest with both the hands as the win is more important than anything else at this stage of the tournament for them.
On the other hand, Rajasthan Royals (RR) has been jolted from both the ends. One is the loss in an all-important encounter and the other is the unavailability of Jos Buttler and Ben Stokes in a crucial final league game.
Rajasthan Royals – Kuldeep Yadav floors Rajasthan with his flight:
Initially, it was Dinesh Karthik, who won the toss and asked the home side to start the run scoring. Accepting the challenge, both the openers smashed Shivam Mavi and Prasidh Krishna to all corners of the park with ease.
At one stage, they found the boundary with ease to bring a quickfire fifty for the team but Andre Russell‘s quick bouncer did the trick as Rahul Tripathi has no answer to tackle it.
Rahane continued his flop show when he failed to reverse sweep Kuldeep. Sanju Samson hung in the middle to rotate the strike but failed to read Sunil Narine‘s off-cutter. It was the breakthrough which opened the gates for KKR who ripped the middle-order of Rajasthan in a flash.
Kuldeep, who was having a lean patch in the tourney made a comeback in style by running a riot of RR’s batting line-up. He scalped all the trump cards of Rajasthan to put the team on top of the game.
However, the late blitz from Jaydev Unadkat, in the end, helped Rajasthan to post a respectable tally of 142 runs on the board.
Kolkata Knight Riders – Chris Lynn and Dinesh Karthik anchor KKR to victory:
In reply to the chase, the Windies’ calm customer, Narine started the things in a flashy manner by smacking Gowtham to 21 runs in the first over.
However, Ben Stokes bowled a stunning wicket-maiden that was followed by a wicket of Robin Uthappa in his next over. His incredible two overs upfront pulled things back for Royals.
Chirs Lynn, much unlike him played a steady run-a-ball knock to counter Rajasthan bowlers while Nitish Rana hung there for a bit but the brilliance of Ish Sodhi asked Karthik to replace Nitish Rana at the crease.
Karthik played with a lot of intent by rotating the strike to the big man and found boundaries often than not.
On the brink of victory, Stokes once against disturbed the scoreboard by bagging the wicket of Lynn but the skipper, Karthik stayed till the end to shoulder KKR to a fine victory.
All in all, Kolkata Knight Riders received much-needed 2 points in their tally.
Now, they will head to Hyderabad to find whether they will make it playoffs or not.
Brief Scores:
RR – 142/10; Jos Buttler (39), Tripathi (27); Kuldeep Yadav 4/20
KKR – 145/4; Chris Lynn (45), Karthik (41*), Stokes 3/15