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Pune: Riding high on a fluent 158-run stand between Robin Uthappa (87) and Gautam Gambhir (62), Kolkata Knight Riders chase down a stiff 183-run target set by Rising Pune Supergiant in clinical fashion.
KKR wanted to chase in the contest and staged a brilliant performance with the bat to move top of the IPL 2017 table.
It wasn’t an ideal start as Sunil Narine didn’t quite get the team off to a flying start. There were a couple of watchful overs before Uthappa exploded and never looked back.
With Gambhir, he put the chase back on track and switched to top gear with ease. The right-hander hit as many as six sixes and seven boundaries during his 47-ball 87 and timed the ball beautifully in the middle.
For Gambhir, the new orange cap holder after his fifty, was happy to play second fiddle and kept the scoreboard ticking with quick singles and the odd boundary.
The pair never allowed any bowler to settle down and the absence of sixth bowler definitely hurt Pune on Wednesday.
In absence of Ben Stokes, Steve Smith seemed out of options and the bowing clearly lacked depth.
All bowlers went for plenty and the only economical bowler was Dan Christian who returned with figures of 1/31 from his quota of overs.
Earlier, after put into bat first, Pune were off to a flier with Rahul Tripathi doing bulk of the scoring in the powerplay overs. He put on 65 runs for the opening wicket with Ajinkya Rahane before he failed to read a Piyush Chawla googly.
Rahane was back in the hut soon and then it was the pair of Smith and MS Dhoni which pushed the scoring. Dhoni launched the attack and scored a 11-ball 23 before being out stumped off Kuldeep Yadav.
The chinaman picked another wicket in the very same over when he sent Manoj Tiwary back to the hut. That clearly was the turning point of the game, and denied RPS a strong finish.
RPS did make a mess of their batting order as they kept Faf Du Plessis, replacing Stokes for this game, waiting in the dug out. He should have been out there instead of Tiwary but that wasn’t the case.
Pune, after the loss, would look to regroup and get their act right, especially with the ball. KKR certainly don’t need to change anything as everything is going their way at the moment.
Brief scores
Rising Pune Supergiant - 182 for 5 (Smith 51*, Rahane 46, Tripathi 38)
Kolkata Knight Riders - 184 for 3 (Uthappa 87, Gambhir 62)
Result - Kolkata Knight Riders won by 7 wickets
