Big smiles on the faces of the hosts at Eden Gardens. Kolkata Knight Riders suffered a shock loss to Punjab Kings despite a huge collection in the previous match in the IPL. This time they returned to victory. The two-time former champions easily defeated Delhi Capitals, who were in great form after winning four of their previous five matches. Varun Chakraborty’s great spin restricted Rishabh Pant’s team to 153 runs and Phil Salt’s stormy batting won Kolkata by 7 wickets.
Delhi won the toss and batted first. Looking at the pitch, Pant said, the spinners will benefit more. Indeed it was, but their two spinners Akshar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav could not play enough roles. They could not accumulate enough runs on the scoreboard to defend. Calcutta’s spinner Varun disappointed them with some great bowling. He took 3 wickets with 16 runs in 4 overs.
Delhi lost 4 wickets for 68 runs in the seventh over. Panter tried to repair the innings with the bat. But he could not score more than 27 runs. In the end, Kuldeep played the highest innings of 35 runs in 26 balls with 5 fours and 1 six and crossed the team score of 150.
Along with Varun, Bhairav Arora and Harshit Rana contributed with two wickets each to restrict Delhi, who lost 9 wickets, to less runs.
With Sunil Narine at the target, he scored 79 runs in a salt power play to complete half of the victory. However, losing two more wickets before the 100 mark slowed down their run rate. After Narine, Salt was the victim of Akshar Patel in the next over. He scored 68 runs off 33 balls with 7 fours and 5 sixes. At the Eden Gardens, he scored 344 runs in just 6 innings, surpassing Sourav Ganguly’s feat. Sourav’s 331 runs in 2010 was the highest so far.
Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer were alert as Kolkata lost three wickets quickly. The victory was somewhat delayed. In the end, Kolkata won the third ball of the 17th over in their unbroken partnership of 57 runs. The hosts scored 157 runs for 3 wickets. Shreyas was unbeaten on 33 and Venkatesh on 26 runs.
In this victory, Kolkata remained second with 12 points in 9 matches. Delhi is number six with 11 points after playing two more matches.
#Varuns #spin #Kolkata #beat #Delhi #salt #storm
