Bowlers set up big win against Sunrisers

Kolkata: The Kolkata Knight Riders registered their fifth win of Pepsi IPL 2015 and climbed to third in the standings after they defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by 35 runs at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata.

In a match where both teams didn’t bat particularly well, KKR did well enough to post 167 runs on the board, after which their bowlers bowled wonderfully to restrict the visitors to 132-9.

Earlier, after being put in to bat, KKR were quick off the blocks with the opening pair of Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir adding 55 runs before the fielding restrictions were relaxed.

The rest of the batsmen – barring Yusuf Pathan – came in, contributed a few runs before walking back to the pavilion. It was left to Yusuf, who scored 30 from 19 balls, to take his team to a respectable total. To sum up KKR’s innings in brief: each of the top three made 30s but did not carry on, and but for Yusuf Pathan’s blitz at the end, KKR would not have ended with 167 for 7.

Not surprisingly, the two spin bowlers in the SRH ranks – Karn Sharma (4-0-29-2) and left-arm spinner Bipul Sharma (4-0-23-1) returned the most effective bowlers. Bhuvneshwar Kumar (2-42) and Moises Henriques (1-20) were the other wicket-takers.

SRH chase 168, in an action-packed first over, which had two wides and a boundary, Umesh bowled two peaches; the first one beat the outside edge of David Warner’s bat and took out the off stump. The final ball of the over was an inswinger that found its way between Naman Ojha’s bat and pad and crashed into the stumps.

When Shikhar Dhawan pulled a Brad Hogg longhop straight to Manish Pandey at backward squareleg in the fifth over, the chase was killed as a contest.

SRH eventually finished their twenty overs at 132 for 9.

For the hosts, after Umesh Yadav had provided the two early strikes, the spinners imposed themselves on the SRH batsmen and never let them get away. Johan Botha’s four overs cost 31, Brad Hogg returned figures of 2 for 17 from his four overs, while Piyush Chawla was miserly in his four overs conceding only 16 runs while picking up one wicket.

Brief scores
Kolkata Knight Riders - 167 for 7 (Pandey 33, Gambhir 31, Karn 2-29)
Sunrisers Hyderabad - 132 for 9 (Henriques 41, Hogg 2-17, Umesh 2-34)
Result - Kolkata Knight Riders won by 35 runs
Points - Kolkata Knight Riders 2, Sunrisers Hyderabad 0
MOM - Uumesh Yadav (Kolkata Knight Riders)