Kolkata Knight Riders could not make it three wins in a row as they failed to cross the obstacle put up by Chennai Super Kings at the Eden gardens on Tuesday night. The Knight Riders fell miserably chasing 165 for a victory, falling short by 55 runs.
As MS Dhoni, captain of the Chennai Super Kings had mentioned at the toss, his team’s strength lies in their batting and hence it was important to make first use of the pitch. Chennai seemed to have made the wrong decision as they found it difficult to keep the run-rate above six till the thirteenth over.
Losing the toss and bowling first, KKR opened their attack with Shane Bond who made his IPL debut. Bond bowled a fiery opening spell going past CSK opener Matthew Hayden’s bat several times. Hayden eventually got out to a blinder of a delivery by Ishant Sharma, who was seen bowling one of his fastest spells. Suresh Raina and Murali Vijay steadied the ship for a while before falling one after the other leaving the team struggling at 55 for 3 off 9.1 overs.
Captain MS Dhoni then joined S Badrinath as the two repaired the innings with some immaculate running between the wickets. Dhoni played a whirlwind of a knock scoring 66 of 33 balls getting good support from Badri who got 43 in a stand of 109 off 65. The turning point of the match were the last four overs where Dhoni took the attack to the opposition, scoring 61 runs off the likes of Ishant, Laxmi Shukla and Bond.
Dhoni and Badri seemed to have caught some momentum taking 16 runs off a Shukla over and never looked back, ending with a commanding 164 for 3.
Set an achievable 165 to win, the Knight Riders started disastrously, losing Brad Hodge off the second ball of the match to Morkel. This wicket maiden was the sign of things to come as Kolkata lost another wicket in the second over- Manoj Tiwary, the hero of the previous match, got bowled after hitting Manpreet Gony for two consecutive boundaries.
The Chennai team sniffed a big victory here as wickets kept tumbling from one end. Wriddhiman Saha and Ganguly seemed to put a fight but did not last too long as Saha fell when the scoreboard read 34 and Dada left with the team stuttering at 55 for five.
Every bowler got amongst the wickets, except Raina, as the KKR finally folded up for 109 in 19.1 overs, handing a comfortable victory to the Chennai Super Kings. Justin Kemp led the bowling taking three wickets off his three overs giving away just 12 runs.
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