Mumbai: Kolkata Knight Riders failed to breach the fortress of Mumbai Indians at Wankhede stadium and lost badly by a margin of 65 runs here on Tuesday.
Sachin Tendulkar played his master strokes to give his side a great start as he added 93 runs for the opening stand with Dwayne Smith. Tendulkar scored 48 runs off 28 balls whereas Smith scored 47 runs off 53 balls.
Dinesh Karthik played a brilliant cameo of 34 runs off 18 balls and took his team to a stiff total of 170 in their 20 overs.
The trio of Harbhajan Singh, Pragyan Ojha and Mitchell Johnson once again turned the fortunes in Mumbai’s favour as they picked up seven wickets amongst them.
Chasing the target, Kolkata Knight Riders were off to a terrible start as they lost the wicket of Gautam Gambhir in very first over as Johnson got the inside edge of his bat which allowed the ball to hit the stumps.
Manvinder Bisla and Jacques Kallis tried their best to reconstruct the innings but after adding 38 runs for the second wicket, Bisla got stumped in the seventh over and from there on KKR lost their way. Yusuf Pathan and Jacques Kallis did show some aggressive intent before they got out for 24 runs and 13 runs respectively. Ojha dismissed Bisla and Pathan who could have been dangerous.
Debabrata Das showed some fight from one end but lost partners at the other end and KKR finally winded up for just 105 runs in 18.2 overs. Das was caught and bowled by Harbhajan who also got Rajat Bhatia out in his next over and ended the spell with 3/27.
Johnson came back to bowl his final over and got the wicket of Sunil Narine and ended his spell with 2/13.
Earlier in the match, it was the Master-Blaster who smashed Ryan McLaren for five consecutive fours and set up the tempo of the match. He kept dealing in boundaries and compensated for the slow start in the best possible away. Though Dwayne struggled to clear the ropes but he did well to rotate the strike with the the Master Blaster. They added 93 runs for the opening stand as Tendulkar was dismissed after scoring 48 runs off just 28 balls and was followed by Dwayne who scored 47 runs in the 14th over.
Mumbai lost the next four wickets for just 45 runs. Rohit Sharma departed after scoring 16 runs off 11 balls and Keiron Pollard turned out to be a disappointment with the bat as he got out after scoring four runs.
However Dinesh Karthik came to the rescue as he played a brilliant cameo of 34 runs off 18 balls whereas Johnson scored 10 runs off 6 balls which took the MI total to 170 runs in their 20 overs.
By ISN