Kolkatta Knight Riders won the toss and chose to bat against Kings XI Punjab at the PCA Stadium Mohali on Saturday. Saurav Ganguly and Manoj Tewari hit half centuries for Kolkatta Knight Riders and scored 183 for 5 wickets; a score which the KingsXI Punjab could not reach and lost the match by 39 runs. David Hussey returned to the squad for the KKR and Bret Lee made his first appearance for Kings XI Punjab and opened the bowling attack.
Chris Gayle opened the innings with Saurav Ganguly for the Kolkatta Knight Riders. Gayle was out caught by Bisla, bowled Salabh Srivastava for 14 runs. Saurav Ganguly and Manoj Tewary took over the reigns of the KKR and consolidated the innings. Ganguly struck his maiden 50 of IPL-3. Ganguly hit this half century after 16 innings and the last one was hit in 2008.
Angelo Mathews was caught by Lee b Pathan for 19 runs. Manoj Tewary struck an emphatic 75 off 47 balls and was not out till the end.
KKR scored 183 for 5 wickets in the stipulated 20 overs.
For the Kings XI Punjab, Irfan Pathan took 2 wickets for 42, S.Srivastava got 2 for 23 and Piyush Chawla bagged 1 for 35.
This was a very important contest between these teams as both are at the bottom of the points table and now KKR have something to look forward to.
For the Kings XI Punjab, nobody took the responsibility to achieve the desired objective. Yuvraj again played an irresponsible knock and could contribute 24 runs only. Yuvraj was caught by Tewary off Ajit Agharkar. After the tenth over, the game had slowed down considerably and runs were coming in one’s and two’s for the KXIP.
Boundaries had totally dried away.
For the KXIP Yuvraj scored 24, Bisla 22 Jayawardane 16 and Sangakara contributed 30 runs. They had reached 100 in the 15 over only which was below par by any stretch of imagination. Irfan Pathan did play some good shots in the end, but was out c and b Bond for 22 runs. The match had, in fact been won during the batting of KKR who even managed to plunder as much as 21 runs in the last over and sat pretty cool at 183 for 5.
While bowling for KKR, Bond took 2 wickets for 24, Agharkar 2 wickets for 32; Mathews and Gayle got on wicket each.
It was indeed a lucky Saturday for Manoj Tewari who bagged all the three awards of the match – Maximum Sixes, Karbonn Kamaal Catch and the Man of the Match for the splendid 75 runs he made for the Kolkatta Knight Riders.