Fast bowler Umran Malik took three wickets for 33 runs for Sunrisers. In reply, Sunrisers team could only manage 123 runs for eight wickets. For him, Abhishek Sharma scored the highest 43 runs. Russell also showed excellent bowling and took three wickets for 22 runs. Tim Southee took two wickets while Umesh Yadav, Varun Chakraborty and Sunil Narine took one wicket each. This is the sixth win for KKR in 13 matches, taking them to 12 points. His hope of reaching the playoff remains in the equation of Agar Magar.
Sunrisers suffered their fifth consecutive defeat. He has 10 points from 12 matches. Sunrisers lost the wicket of captain Kane Williamson (nine) in the first six overs and scored 31 runs. Williamson could not take advantage of the life gift he got initially and got bowled in an attempt to scoop the ball off Russell. Abhishek continued to score runs from the other end. He hit two sixes in a row on Narayan but Southee dealt a blow to Sunrisers by catching Rahul Tripathi (nine) on his own ball.
Chakraborty did not allow Abhishek to complete his half-century by getting him caught by wicketkeeper Billings, while Narayan sent Nicholas Pooran (two) to the pavilion as soon as he came, while Aiden Markram (32 runs from 25 balls) after hitting three sixes, Umesh Yadav got his wicket. I played in Russell continued his stellar performance with the bowling of Washington Sundar (4) and Marco Yansen (01). Earlier, KKR scored only 20 runs in the first four overs and meanwhile lost the wicket of Venkatesh Iyer (7) who was bowled by Marco Yansen (1 for 30).
Nitish Rana (26 off 16 balls, three sixes, one four) and Ajinkya Rahane (28 off 24 balls, three sixes) put on 35 runs in the next two overs to take the score to 55 in the powerplay. Rana also sent Yansen’s delivery for six after hitting two sixes on comeback T Natarajan (1 for 43) after recovering from injury. Rahane also hit a six in this over of Yansen. He also welcomed Washington Sundar with a six but Umran created a ruckus in KKR’s camp as soon as he arrived.
Umran showed Rana and Rahane in their first over while skipper Shreyas Iyer (15) showed the way to the pavilion in the second over. It was costly to pull Rana off the short pitch ball and Rahane to make an upper cut and he could not stretch his innings. Shashank Singh took the catch of both of them. Rana and Rahane shared a 48-run partnership. Natarajan bowled Rinku Singh (five) on an inswing yorker to reduce the score to 94 for five. In such a situation, Russell converted Natarajan’s full toss into a thunderous six, then Billings hit two fours on Umran. Billings could not do much after this and was given an easy catch on the ball of Bhuvneshwar Kumar (1 for 27 runs). Russell hit three sixes in the last over of Washington’s innings.