IPL 2017 | Sunil Narine’s fastest ever IPL fifty hands RCB yet another humiliation

IPL 2017 | Sunil Narine’s fastest ever IPL fifty hands RCB yet another humiliation

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BCCI

In a batting effort that sent IPL records tumbling, KKR secured a dominating 6-wicket victory over RCB at the Chinnaswamy stadium today. Sunil Narine scored an incredible 15-ball 50 and KKR scored 105 off the powerplay overs to make a mockery off RCB’s target of 159 with 29 balls to spare.

Brief Scores: Royal Challengers Bangalore 158/6 (Travis Head 75*, Mandeep Singh 52; Umesh Yadav 3/36, Sunil Narine 2/29) beat Kolkata Knight Riders 159/4 (Sunil Narine 54, Chris Lynn 50; Negi 2/19) by 6 wickets.

Winning the toss, Gautam Gambhir opted to bowl first and announced that the Knight Riders had made three changes to the team, with the biggest one being Chris Lynn returning to the team after recovering from a shoulder injury. Piyush Chawla and Ankit Rajpoot also joined the Kiwi in the team in place of Nathan Coulter-Nile, Kuldeep Yadav, and Suryakumar Yadav. RCB made just one change to the team with Travis Head replacing the out-of-form Shane Watson.

KKR dismiss the “RCB Trinity” cheaply again 

Kolkata Knight Riders started on the offensive as Umesh Yadav picked up a first ball wicket to send Chris Gayle packing, who was playing his 100th IPL match. Mandeep Singh tried to up the ante for RCB but Virat Kohli (5) and AB de Villiers (10) failed to support the youngster in his efforts. RCB’s failure to put together a decent partnership in the powerplay saw them reach a paltry score of 40/3 at the end of 6 overs. With their three main players back in the dugout, Mandeep and Travis Head decided to consolidate the innings. KKR, for their part, piled up the pressure using spin and medium pace and restricted the home side to just 63/3 at the end of 10 overs.

Travis Head save RCB from the blushes

The home side were finding it difficult to get the ball past the ropes and when Head finally hit Rajpoot for a boundary behind square leg in the 12th over, it brought an end to a 30-ball boundary drought. But just as Bangalore started accelerating, with Head smashing Narine for a huge six and Mandeep putting the ball past the backward point boundary, the rain Gods decided to play spoilsport and the game had to be stopped. 

After the restart, Mandeep brought up his fifty but in the very next over, attempting a slog sweep, found the palms of Umesh Yadav at deep square leg thereby bringing an end to the 71-run fourth wicket stand. But Head took up the responsibility of making sure RCB reached a competitive total as he orchestrated RCB’s onslaught in the death overs. Bangalore scored an astonishing 43 runs off the last three overs to take the score to 158/6 in the allotted overs.

Narine stars in KKR’s record-breaking evening 

Chris Lynn marked his return to the IPL by smashing Aniket Choudhary for 14 runs in the first over before hitting Chahal for the same in the third over. Having watched the Lynn show from the non-striker’s end, Sunil Narine decided to show the Aussie what he had been upto during Lynn’s injury layoff. Over the next 11 balls, Narine scored an incredible 45 runs, to not only bring up the fastest fifty of IPL 2017, but also go joint top with teammate Yusuf Pathan in the all-time list for the IPL. By the end of the powerplay, KKR broke another IPL record by scoring 105 during the fielding restrictions to overtake CSK’s record of 100. Even though Narine and Lynn fell in consecutive overs after the powerplay, they had already set up the win for their team as KKR found themselves needing just 33 runs from the last 10 overs.

De Grandhomme takes KKR home

Colin de Grandhomme and Gambhir kept the runs flowing as they took 10 runs off the Pawan Negi to reduce the required run rate below three an over. Chahal gave away just five runs in his next over but he was just delaying the inevitable. De Grandhomme hit Head for a huge six over long on before being dismissed by Negi in the very next over. And it was all over with alomst five overs to go when Manish Pandey took a double off Negi to secure a dominating win for KKR and take them to 2nd in the points table with 16 points from 12 matches.

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