Scintillating half-centuries from Rahul Tripathi and Venkatesh Iyer gave Kolkata Knight Riders a thumping seven-wicket win against Mumbai Indians in Abu Dhabi. As a result, Knight Riders have jumped to the fourth spot on the points table, with eight points from nine games.
Chasing 155, Knight Riders attacked right from the start. Shubman Gill fell early but Iyer and Tripathi added 88 in 52 balls for the second wicket. Iyer struck 53 off 30 balls and Tripathi an unbeaten 74 off 42 balls as Knight Riders chased down the target in 15.1 overs.
Earlier, a returning Rohit Sharma and Quinton de Kock put together 78 in 9.2 overs for the first wicket. At that stage, Mumbai looked on track for a total in the vicinity of 180. However, Sunil Narine, Varun Chakravarthy and, towards the end, Lockie Ferguson pulled things back to restrict them to a sub-par total.
Narine provided Knight Riders with a breakthrough when Rohit mistimed a slog sweep and was caught at long-on. That started a lull. Mumbai managed only 29 runs from overs 10 to 15 as Prasidh picked up the wickets of Suryakumar Yadav and de Kock. The latter reached his half-century off 37 balls before mistiming a slower ball to short midwicket.
Knight Riders’ openers, Gill and Iyer, gave the side a breezy start for the second time in two games. Gill started it by launching Trent Boult over deep midwicket before Iyer pulled him over deep square-leg for the second six of the over. In the next over, Iyer hit Adam Milne for a six and two fours. By the time, Jasprit Bumrah bowled Gill with an offcutter, Knight Riders had raced to 40 in three overs.
Chief scores
Kolkata Knight Riders 159/3 in 20 overs (Tripathi 74, Iyer 53, Bumrah 3/42)
Mumbai Indians 155/6 in 20 overs (de Kock 55, Rohit 33, Ferguson 2/27)
– (ESPNcricinfo)
by Daily News Sri Lanka
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