Jaipur: Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) crumbled under the intense pressure that was created by the pace attack of Rajasthan Royals (RR) and lost the match by 19 runs at Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur on Monday.
KKR had no clue against the trio of Siddharth Trivedi, Rahul Shukla and Kevon Cooper. They picked up eight wickets among them and gave a thumping victory to the hosts. Brad Hodge played a brilliant innings at the end of the RR innings and scored 46 runs off just 31 balls. Ajinkya Rahane also played a crucial role as he scored 36 runs off 34 balls and kept the one end intact. Meanwhile Rahul Dravid took a brave decision of going in with five pacers and it paid him rich dividends as Rajasthan outplayed the defending champions and registered their second win of this season and first at home.
Kolkata Knight Riders started off well as their captain Gautam Gambhir added 14 runs in the first over that was bowled by S Sreesanth. However, Shaun Tait was bowling at 145+ pace from the other end consistently and was giving tough time to Maninder Bisla. Bisla failed to sustain the pressure and was soon stunned by Rahul Shukla. Shukla gave another blow to KKR in very next ball by getting their trump card Jacques Kallis out. In the fourth over of the match, Shaun Tait clocked the 150.1 kmph and registered the fastest bowl in the history of IPL.
Manoj Tiwary came in to join his skipper but didn't last long as Siddharth Trivedi got him out on his very first ball. He was adjudged leg before wicket as ball was going to hit the middle stump. To counter attack Trivedi, Gambhir started coming down the pitch but that didn’t go in his favour as he ended up losing his wicket. Gambhir and Tiwary contributed 22 and 14 runs respectively.
Eoin Morgan and Yusuf Pathan came in to the middle in the 7th over of the innings but Pathan disappointed once again as he edged the delivery that was wide of the off stump. He went for duck and at the end of the 8th over KKR was 5/46.
Meanwhile Eoin Morgan was holding the fort from one end as he kept losing his partners from the other end and the next to depart was Laxmi Ratan Shukla who was undone by Trivedi. Rajat Bhatia joined Morgan and looked in good touch before getting out to Tait in the 14th over.
Meanwhile, Morgan started picking the gaps to get some quick boundaries to keep the run rate going. Brett Lee came out to bat and didn’t trouble the score much and got out after scoring just five runs. Morgan kept his fight going and ended up making 51 runs. He smashed three sixes and three fours in his innings and brought KKR really close in the match. Kevon Cooper dismissed the Eoin Morgan and Shami Ahmed in his final over and ended up with the figures of 3/15.
Siddharth Trivedi was adjudged man-of the match for his brilliant bowling performance of 3/23 in his four overs.
Earlier , Rajasthan started with their new opening duo of Ajinkya Rahane and Shane Watson. Watson, who was playing his first match of this edition of Indian Premier League, got out when he was trying to play a shot but he didn’t get the hold of it and gave a catch to fielder standing at extra cover. Brett Lee picked up the wicket of Watson and dismissed him for just five runs and ensured that he didn't do much damage to their bowling.
Watson’s dismissal briught Rahul Dravid in the middle and he tried to steady the innings with Ajinkya Rahane. They put up a 35 run stand before Dravid got out after making a decent contribution of 17 runs. Hero of last match, Stuart Binny, took the centre stage and was looking in good touch as he smashed three boundaries in quick succession. Before Laxmi rattan Shukla showed him the door by getting him leg before wicket.
Brad Hodge came in to the middle and started rebuilding the innings with Rahane. Both of them did really well to put up a great fight and added 38 runs before Rahane got out in the 16th over when he tried to muscle the ball and gave an easy catch to wicket keeper. Sunil narine picked up his first wicket of the match. In the very same over, Kevin Cooper who replaced Rahane in the middle, got out when he went for a sweep shot and missed it. Manvinder Bisla did no mistake and took the bails off in quick time to get rid of Cooper.
Meanwhile Hodge kept the scoring going from one end and scored seven boundaries in his contribution of 46 runs to the team’s total. Dishant Yagnik played a nice cameo of 16 runs to give some much needed score to accelerate the run rate. Rajasthan royals ended their innings at 143 runs.