Lucknow Super Giants did not care about Kolkata Knight Riders even though it was a home field. Kolkata climbed to number one in the IPL table just shy of losing by their biggest margin in terms of runs. Sunil Narine is the hero of this 98-run win with frugal bowling after rampaging with the bat.
Last year, Lucknow lost to Mumbai Indians by 81 runs in Chennai. This was their heaviest defeat in the IPL so far. This time the team overshadowed the failure of the batters.
Phil Salt and Narine gave Kolkata a great start. Salt was the victim of Naveen Ul Haq’s partnership of 61 runs, he scored 32 runs in 14 balls, 5 fours and 1 six.
After that, Narine formed a partnership of 79 runs with Ankrish Raghuvanshi. The Windies star scored 81 runs in 39 balls with 6 fours and 7 sixes. Raghuvanshi could not take more than 32 runs in his innings.
Next, Kolkata collected 235 runs for 6 wickets with 23 runs from 15 balls by Shreyas Iyer and 25 runs from 6 balls by Ramandeep Singh. This is the highest score in Lucknow field.
Naveen Ul Haque took the maximum three wickets for Lucknow.
Lucknow lost Arshin Kulkarni in the second over at the target. Ramandeep was caught brilliantly by Mitchell Starc. Then the hosts kept fighting in the partnership of Lokesh Rahul with Marcus Stoinis. After breaking the pair for 50 runs, no one could resist.
Lucknow was knocked out of the fight when Rahul got out for 25 runs. Stoinis was the victim of Andre Russell’s top score of 36 runs.
Harshit Rana and Varun Chakraborty took three wickets each to bowl out Lucknow for 137 runs. The hosts were bowled out in 16.1 overs. Along with Stoinis, Russell took the important wicket of Nicholas Pooran.
Narine got one wicket but conceded only 22 runs in four overs. He became the man of the match with all-round performance. After Russell, Narine is the man of the match for the joint-most 15 times in the Kolkata jersey in the IPL.
Kolkata is number one with 16 points in eighth win in 11 matches. Rajasthan Royals are number two with equal points after playing one match less. Lucknow is fifth with 12 points.
