Kolkata Knight Riders registered an emphatic 34-run win over Mumbai Indians in their last home encounter at Eden Gardens.
The win kept our hopes alive to finish in the top-4 and put us at number 5 at the points table and also ended the jinx against Mumbai Indians.
Visiting Captain Rohit Sharma won the toss and asked the home team to bat first on a wicket that seemed flat as a highway.
DK made three changes to playing eleven. Sandeep Warrier played his maiden IPL match, Harry Gurney & Robin Uthappa returned to the squad after missing out in the previous match. For MI, Barinder Sran came in for Anukul Roy.
KKR were off to a flying start, thanks to Shubman Gill and Chris Lynn. Both kept the scorecard ticking at a brisk rate. Lynn scored a well-deserved half-century that came in just 27 balls.
The Australian gave a perfect platform for the batting to come before he got out in the 10th over to Rahul Chahar with the score at 96/1. In a positive move, Andre Russell was promoted to No.3 to keep up with the scoring rate.
Lynn's dismissal made no deference to the scoring rate. This time Shubman took charge of things along with Andre Rusell. The pair added 62 runs in 35 balls. Shubman struck his 2nd 50 for Vivo IPL 2019 and was the second wicket to fall after hitting 76, his highest IPL score.
Dre Russ as usual wasn't holding back and did what he's been doing all this season. The Jamaican hit 80 runs in 40 balls and helped KKR post a mammoth total of 232 for 2 in 20 Overs.
It was a perfect start for KKR while defending. Narine gave the first blow in the form of de Kock's wicket in only the 2nd over of the innings.
Night became bad to worse for MI as they lost their skipper Rohit Sharma cheaply in the fourth over. Rohit became Gurney's 150 T20 dismissal.
Russell bowled the first over after powerplay and it was like one of those nights when he couldn’t do anything wrong. He dismissed Lewis in the first ball of the over and followed that up with Surya Kumar Yadav's wicket in the second as MI were struggling at 58/4 in the 9th over.
Hardik Pandya walked in and started the onslaught against Piyush Chawla who came in to bowl the 10th over. In the process, the MI allrounder scored the fastest half century (50 off 17 balls) of Vivo IPL 2019. He ended up scoring 91 runs from just 34 balls which put KKR under pressure but the huge total was beyond reach.
Gurney put an end to his entertaining knock in the last ball of the 18th over. In the end, KKR won the match by 34 runs and put an end to their 6-match losing streak to finish their home league on a high.
KKR now have a 4-day break before playing their penultimate league game against Kings XI Punjab on 3rd May followed by another away game against Mumbai Indians on 5th May.
Brief Score:
KKR: 232 for 2 in 20 Overs (Russell 80*, Shubman 76, H Pandya 1/31)
MI: 198 for 7 in 20 Overs (H. Pandya 91, S. Yadav 26, Russell 2/25)
