Pune, May 9 (IANS) The Kolkata Knight Riders romped home to their first away win in the Indian Premier League (IPL) beating the Pune Warriors by 46 runs at the Subrata Roy Sahara Stadium here Thursday.
The Warriors succumbed to their eighth consecutive defeat after failing to achieve a target of 153, getting bowled out for 106 in 19.3 overs. Apart from opener Robin Uthappa (31) and Sri Lankan Angelo Mathews (40), all other Pune batsmen failed to even reach double figures.
Right arm pacer Lakshmipathy Balaji took 3/19, including a brilliant caught-and-bowled off the last ball of the match to take Parvez Rasool’s wicket. Left-arm spinner Iqbal Abdulla, South African Jacques Kallis and mystery spinner Sunil Narine took two wickets each while Rajat Bhatia picked up one.
The Warriors’ batting line-up completely flopped resulting in another disappointing 11th loss of the season which keeps them at the bottom of the points table.
Earlier, the visitors scored 152/6 with skipper Gautam Gambhir scoring the highest with 50 runs which included six boundaries. Coming into the match after a loss to the Mumbai Indians Tuesday, the Knights came back into the tournament with an authoritative win.
Kolkata were looking like they would end up with a score of around 130-odd runs but some big-hitting in the death overs propelled them to a 150-par score.
Dutch player Ryan ten Doeschate’s 21-ball 31, Manoj Tiwary’s unbeaten 15 and Rajat Bhatia’s unbeaten 13 off five balls took the defending champions to a challenging total.
The visitors kept losing wickets throughout their innings but managed to keep the scoreboard ticking courtesy Gambhir, who was initially anchoring the innings. After his dismissal, ten Doeschate took up his position and hammered the Pune bowlers around the ground.
Swing bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar proved to be most successful with three wickets from four overs giving away 25 runs while Australian Mitchell March took 2/7.
Parvez Rasool, the first player from Jammu and Kashmir to take part in the IPL, clinched a wicket that of Jacques Kallis from his four overs, giving away 23 runs.
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