Kolkata Knight Riders broke the losing chain as the men in the purple jersey bounced back after four losses on the trot. KKR put a clinical performance with the ball first, and then it was a decent performance with the bat, which helped them win this encounter against Punjab Kings by five wickets at Ahmedabad.
KKR won the toss and opted to bowl first in the 21st match of the Indian Premier League 2021 season. PBKS batted in unknown conditions, and they didn’t know what the new pitch would offer for them.
Still, their start would have been a better one even though KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal started carefully. But they couldn’t accelerate in the innings. KL tried to do that, but he was the first one to depart for 19 runs.
In the next over, Chris Gayle was adjusted caught behind by the bowling of Shivam Mavi for a duck, and Deepak Hooda also perished for just a single run. Mayank Agarwal and Nicholas Pooran took the score towards the fifty-run mark. But well set Agarwal too couldn’t do much.
He was dismissed for 31 runs.KKR kept chipping away with regular wickets. The Punjab Kings batters were never in the game.
Their big hitters like Pooran, Shahrukh Khan, and Mosies Henriques were dismissed in quick succession.
Punjab Kings got to 123 runs because of the lovely cameo played by Chris Jordan. The fast bowler from England played a lovely hand, and that too in a crunch situation.
Jordan scored 30 runs. But these were handy runs because they helped PBKS to put a good fight with the ball later when KKR chased this score in their innings.
When Jordan came into bat, PBKS didn’t look to score a hundred runs on the board. But Jordan stood at the crease till the end and ensured that Punjab Kings could post a decent score on the board.
The KKR bowlers were on top after that opening stand. They picked up wickets at regular intervals and strangled the middle order batsmen of the PBKS team. Prasidh Krishna took three wickets, Narine and Cummins picked up two wickets each, with Mavi and Chakravarthy took one wicket each to their names.
The run chase of 124 runs didn’t start well for Kolkata Knight Riders batsmen. They lost Nitish Rana for a duck, Shubman Gill for nine runs, and Narine again for a duck. Sunil Narine’s dismissal came largely because of a brilliant catch taken by the young and dynamic Ravi Bishnoi.
KKR was in trouble in the run chase when their skipper Morgan and Tripathi bailed them out. They shared a partnership of 66 runs, which helped the purple men be in the run chase as this partnership also helped Eoin Morgan be back in form.
Morgan was unbeaten till the end. But Tripathi couldn’t carry his innings along, and he was out for 41 runs.
Then KKR got the blow. The run out of Andre Russell kept the game in balance for the PBKS team. But in the end, Morgan’s unbeaten 47 runs and Dinesh Karthik 10 not-out runs allowed out to win this match by five wickets. Morgan was also given the man of the match award for his good batting performance.
For the PBKS team, Mohammad Shami, Mosies Henriques, Deepak Hooda, and Ashradeep Singh picked up one wicket each to their name. But it was mainly the batter’s fault, and because of them, the PBKS team lost this match. The bowlers put a fight. But it was not enough.
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