Defending champion Kolkata Knight Riders won the second match of the 18th IPL season at excellent bowling. The team beat Sunrisers Hyderabad by 80 runs at its home ground Eden Gardens Stadium. Varun Chakraborty and Vaibhav Aurora took 3-3 wickets for KKR.
After losing the toss in Kolkata, KKR batted first and lost 6 wickets for 200 runs. Angkrish Raghuvanshi scored 50 and Venkatesh Iyer 60. In reply, Hyderabad were all out for 5 runs in 5.2 overs. Henrik Class scored 33 runs.
Match analysis in 5 points …
1. The Match of Player
Luxury Arora gave KKR a brilliant start while defending the target of 201 runs. Vaibhav sent Travis Head to the pavilion in the first over. He then caught Ishaan Kishan in his second over. After that, Vaibhav also took a big wicket of Henrick Class.
2. The hero of the win
- Varun Chakraborty: Chakraborty, who bowled in the middle over, pushed SRH to the backfoot. He sent Aniket Verma, Pat Cummins and Simjit Singh to the pavilion.
- Angkrish Raghuvanshi: KKR toss lost and came to bat first. Lost 2 wickets for 16 runs. Raghuvanshi came here to bat, he scored a fifty and gave the team more than 100 runs.
- Venkatesh Iyer: KKR lost 4 wickets for 106 runs. Here Venkatesh scored a fifty and broke the team closer to 200 runs. He also shared a 91 -run partnership with Rinku Singh.
3. Fighter of the Match
Kamindu Mendis, who debuted in the IPL, was seen fighting against sunrisers. He had a chance to put only one over, but was caught out to Raghuvanshi, who looked dangerous. Mendis then showed his strength in the bat and scored 27 off 20 balls with 2 sixes and 1 four. However, this performance was not enough to win his team.
4. Turning points
SRH lost the match in the powerplay while chasing the target of the 201 run. Ishaan Kishan 2, Travis Head 4 and Abhishek Sharma returned to the pavilion with 2 runs. After losing 3 wickets for 9 runs, the team could not recover and was all out in the 17th over.
5. What did the captains say?
Sunrisers captain Pet Cummins said-
The night was bad for us. In the mid-inning break, we felt that the target chase could happen. We lost many runs due to poor fielding. The bat was very weak. I feel bad after losing 3 consecutive matches. We scored 280 runs just 2 weeks ago. Our batsmen are doing their best, yet I am more unhappy with the team's fielding. We missed a few catches. Bowling was not so bad, they batted well. We just threw 3 overs with a spin, I wanted to give the spinners a little more over there.
Kolkata captain Ajinkya Rahane said-
This match was very important to us. I am happy to win with a big margin. We want to play on the same pitch. We initially lost 2 wickets and then took 6 overs to handle the situation. Once set, scoring became easier. I am happy with the batting sequence. The last 2 matches were bad for us, we made mistakes. Rinku and Venkatesh played good shots. Batsmen like Ramandeep, Russell and Moin were sitting. Only after 15 overs we adopted an aggressive strategy, which worked. We wanted to score 180 runs, the target of 200 runs. We have 3 good spinners. Naren and Varun bowled brilliantly. Luxury and Harshit took a good wicket with a new ball.
Image Credit: Images/graphics belong to (Divya-Bhaskar).