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.

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.

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.

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