MI vs KKR | Knight Riders practically seal qualification with astounding bounce back on atypical Wankhede deck

SportsCafe Desk

BySportsCafe Desk, SportsCafe Editor

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Kolkata Knight Riders secured their first win at the Wankhede in nearly 12 years to close the gap at the top of the table to two points while practically eliminating Mumbai Indians from contention. The visitors bounced back from 57/5 to post 169 on the board before bowling out the hosts for 145.

‌Brief score: KKR 169 (19.5) [Venkatesh 70(52), Pandey 42(31); Bumrah 3/18 (3.5)] defeat MI 145 (18.5) [SKY 56(35), David 24(20); Starc 4/33 (3.5)] by 24 runs

Opting to field first, Mumbai Indians managed to crack the highly successful opening pair of Phil Salt and Sunil Narine in the first over itself as Nuwan Thushara got rid of the Englishman. Angkrish Raghuvanshi and Shreyas Iyer quickly followed suit in the Sri Lankan pacer's next over before Hardik Pandya castled Narine to leave KKR reeling at 57/4 at the end of the powerplay. Piyush Chawla incited further damage by grabbing a simple return catch to dispatch Rinku Singh on the very first ball after the fielding restrictions lifted, thus forcing the visitors to bring on Manish Pandey as an Impact Player with hopes of contending with the difficult sticky deck on offer. The veteran, playing his first game of the season, duly obliged as he built an 83-run partnership with Venkatesh Iyer over the next 10 overs. Even though the rest of the team collapsed in a heap once Pandya finally broke through in the 17th over, a couple of lusty blows from Venkatesh ensured the team registered a competitive score of 169 while the batter himself ended on 70 off 52 deliveries.

In response, Mumbai's openers could not do much better either with Ishan Kishan having his leg stump flattened by Mitchell Starc after a seven-ball stay. Sluggish run-a-ball knocks of 11 each from Rohit Sharma and Naman Dhir also ended in successive overs towards the end of the powerplay with the score reading 46/3 after six overs. However, their successors fared even worse as Tilak Varma, Nehal Wadhera, and skipper Hardik combined for 11 runs in 20 deliveries before succumbing to the Sunil Narine-Varun Chakravarthy onslaught, thus leaving the hosts in dire straits at 71/6 after 11.2 overs. Both Suryakumar Yadav and Tim David consequently had to contend with playing an uncharacteristic brand of quiet cricket, until a loose Vaibhav Arora 14th over was pummelled for 20 runs by the former to swing some momentum back in MI's over. The upsurge did not last long though as Russell got rid of SKY with 50 still to get off 28 deliveries before Starc's scalp of his compatriot in the penultimate over proved to be the final nail in MI's coffin. 

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