Opting to bat first, KKR’s woes at the top of the order continued as they lost both the openers inside the first six overs, leaving their middle and lower order with a lot to do. And the duo of Nitish Rana and Eoin Morgan responded to their team’s call, restoring sanity with a solid 62-run partnership before new recruitee Rahul Tripathi chipped in with a healthy cameo to launch the Knight Riders to a fighting total of 161.

RCB, in response, lost opener Parthiv Patel on just the fifth ball of their chase, but an absolutely breathtaking cameo from skipper Virat Kohli put the KKR bowlers to the sword, after which Australia’s limited-overs skipper Aaron Finch took control of the game to pile misery on the Dinesh Karthik-led side. A mini collapse ensued right towards the end for RCB, triggering harrowing memories of the past, but both Shivam Dube and Chris Morris kept their composure to take the Bengaluru-based franchise over the line at the Eden Gardens.

The match was pretty low on intensity with minimal drastic momentum shifts, however, skipper Virat Kohli’s onslaught at the top set the stadium ablaze and breathed life into a somewhat lifeless encounter. After losing Parthiv for just 1, Kohli walked in with his sole aim being to take the KKR bowling apart, and he did just that, striking Cummins for two consecutive boundaries before accounting for 13 runs off the first 3 balls of Prasidh Krishna in the 4th over. This pretty much killed off the chase, with the required run rate staying under 8 for the remainder of the innings. 

It’s not often that you see Andre Russell making the “lows” section, but today was one such day. A seven-ball Russell cameo usually ends up with him scoring 20-odd runs, but all he could manage today was just 7 runs, with no boundaries to his name. It was a monumental struggle for the right-hander, who had a tailor-made situation right in front of him to explode from the word go. By the looks of it, he is human, after all.

Kolkata’s opening stand has been hideous thus far this season and today, yet again, their openers let them down. Unlike the previous games where only one opener fell early, both Narine and Gill fell cheaply inside the powerplay to hand RCB the initiative from the very beginning. A total of 5 boundaries in the first 6 overs meant that 43 was all they managed, that too for the loss of a couple of wickets.

Consolidating against spin after losing two early wickets can be painful, but both Nitish Rana and Eoin Morgan did a fine job of mopping up the mess that was made early, batting KKR into a position of security. However, in the process of doing so, the duo batted a bit too cautiously as despite just losing one wicket between overs 7-15, KKR scored just 71 runs in the time period. Not bad, but definitely not great either.

It’s a universally renowned fact that RCB are not the best of teams whilst bowling at the death, but today, not only were they able to keep Dre Russ quiet, but they also ensured that they went into the break with momentum in their hands. Given they had a well-set Rana and an in-form DK ready to tear them apart, the trio of Saini, Morris and Umesh did a fine job of limiting the damage. 47 runs were all KKR scored in their last five overs, failing to get to the 180 that they were hoping to achieve. 

Barring Kohli’s freak cameo, the game was a dull encounter which did not have the energy or intensity that it was expected to have before the match started. Cameos here and there spiced up the contest a bit, but the one-sided nature of the contest made it a pretty average watch.