Kolkata Knight Riders complete 100th IPL win with 10-run victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad as Jonny Bairstow's 55 from 40 balls comes in vain; Nitish Rana top-scores for Kolkata with 80; watch Rajasthan vs Punjab Kings from 2.50pm, Monday, Sky Sports Cricket
Monday 12 April 2021 07:06, UK
Jonny Bairstow continued his excellent white-ball form in India but still ended up on the losing side as Sunrisers Hyderabad slipped to a 10-run defeat to Eoin Morgan's Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL.
Bairstow - who hit 124 and 94 in England's ODI series against India last month - cracked three sixes and five fours in a score of 55 from 40 balls as Sunrisers set about trying to top KKR's 187-6 in Chennai.
The Englishman rallied Sunrisers from 10-2 to 102-2 as he bossed a 92-run stand with Manish Pandey (61no off 44), only to then cut Pat Cummins to backward point in the 13th over with 86 runs still needed.
Kolkata became even stronger favourites at that point and although Abdul Samad's brace of sixes off Cummins in the penultimate over left Sunrisers requiring a gettable 22 from the last, Andre Russell shipped only 11 - six off them when Pandey hammered the final ball into the stands.
Kolkata join Royal Challengers Bangalore and Delhi Capitals in winning their first games, with the first round of matches to conclude on Monday with Rajasthan Royals vs Punjab Kings.
Nitish Rana (80 off 56) and Rahul Tripathi (53 off 29) blazed a second-wicket stand of 93 from just 50 deliveries for Kolkata as they raced to 145-1 after 15 overs having been inserted by Sunrisers.
However, Morgan's men managed only 26 runs from the next four overs as they lost Tripathi, Rana, Russell (5) and Morgan (2) - Rana and Morgan out to successive deliveries from Mohammad Nabi (2-32), whose fellow Afghanistan spinner Rashid Khan took 2-24.
Dinesh Karthik (22no off 9) ensured KKR plundered 16 from the final over and their total seemed even more formidable as Sunrisers skipper David Warner (3) and Wriddhiman Saha (7) fell early.
Warner was dropped by Cummins off Harbhajan Singh - who was playing his first professional cricket match since the 2019 IPL final between his former club Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians - when he was on two but was then caught behind off Prasidh Krishna shortly after.
Bairstow then took over, reaching his sixth half-century from 32 deliveries with a leg-side six off Varun Chakravarthy, having early deposited Harbhajan and Russell into the stands in Chennai.
Nabi (14 off 11), Vijay Shankar (11 off 7) and Samad (19no off 8) all chipped in after Bairstow's departure but Kolkata never seemed in danger of letting their position slip.
Russell conceded only six runs and dismissed Shankar in the 18th over and then delivered in the final over, too, as Sunrisers ended on 177-5 and Kolkata secured their 100th win in the IPL.
Watch game four of IPL 2021, between Rajasthan Royals and Punjab Kings, from 2.50pm on Monday on Sky Sports Cricket.
