IPL: Kolkata Knight Riders Win Their First Match Of The Season

The pace bowlers of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) helped beat Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) by 42 runs at M Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore.

Set a target of 166, the RCB batting never got going after fall of early wickets. While Brett Lee bowled with great control, Kallis and Balaji were main wicket takers. Kallis removed the two openers, Pujara and Gayle, before wither of them could make any telling contribution and Balaji tore through the middle order with the scalps of Kohli, de Villiers, Mayank Agarwal and Vettori. At 60 for 6 and the required run rate having jumped to almost 13 runs per over, RCB was always far behind in the hunt. Only Vettori and Vinay Kumar made scores in excess of 20 as all the rest of the batsmen failed. Bangladesh’s Shakib Al Hasan took two late order wickets for KKR.

Earlier, Gambhir played a superlative knock of 64 with support first from Kallis and then Manvinder Bisla who scored 46, to raise KKR’s total to 165 off 20 overs. Almost all the RCB bowlers took wickets, as the middle order and lower middle order of KKR fell in pursuit of a putting up a big total. In the end though the failure of RCB’s batting cost them the match.