Jaipur: Rajasthan Royals bowled brilliantly to dismantle the Kings XI Punjab batting line-up and won the match by six wickets at Sawai Singh Stadium, Jaipur on Sunday. Ajinkya Rahane and Sanju Samson batted brilliantly in a crunch situation and helped their team achieve the target in the last over of the match. Rahane and Samson contributed 34 and 25 respectively.
Earlier, Rajasthan pace bowlers led by S Sreesanth and Siddharth Trivedi helped their team restrict Punjab to 124. David Hussey was the highest run-scorer for his team did well to get 41 runs. All four fast bowlers of RR picked up two wickets each.
Rajasthan Royals started off well as Shane Watson started smacking the boundaries all over the park from the word go. He hit three consecutive boundaries in the second over of the innings bowled by Ryan Harris. He continued hammering Harris in his second over too with couple of boundaries and RR was 35/0 in their first four overs. Watson scored back to back boundaries of Parwinder Awana but got out in the very same over. But his cameo of 32 runs off 19 balls setup the match beautifully for Royals.
But Praveen Kumar, who came to bowl gave RR back to back blows as he got out Rahul Dravid and Stuart Binny out in the eighth over, as RR reduced to 58/3. RR added another 10 runs till the 10th over of the innings. Brad Hodge, who had been consistent with the bat, got out leg before wicket for 12 runs but Ajinkya Rahane and Sanju Samson put up a brilliant partnership of 47 runs for the fifth wicket. Rahane batted till the end and scored 34 off 42 balls. Samson also batted brilliantly and contribution of 27 runs off 23 balls.
Earlier, Kings XI Punjab was off to a terrible start as they lost their three wickets for just 10 runs in first four overs. S Sreesanth gave the early blows by getting out their opening duo of Adam Gilchrist and Mandeep Singh in his first over. Manan Vohra ran himself out when a direct hit by James Faulkner found Vohra out of crease. David Hussey and Gurkeerat Singh started rebuilding Punjab’s innings and added 35 runs before Siddharth Trivedi took Gurkeerat’s wicket in his very first over of the day. Kings XI Punjab was 57/4 after first 10 overs.
Hussey, who was looking brilliant, kept the scoreboard ticking with his ones and twos along with odd boundaries before being deceived with a slower delivery from Trivedi, who got his second wicket of the match. R Sathish came in to bat but just made 11 runs and was undone by James Faulkner. Azhar Mahmood and Piyush Chawla too left after contributing 23 and 5 runs to Kings XI total. Kevon Cooper got both the batsmen out in his successive overs.
However, Praveen Kumar played a cameo and smacked 15 runs in just 7 balls. Faulkner picked up his second when he dismissed Parwinder Awana in his final over. Kings XI Punjab could not finish their innings as they were all out for 124 runs in 18.5 overs.
By ISN