Kolkatta Knight Riders beat Rajasthan Royals in an almost one-sided match.Rajasthan Royals won the toss and chose to bat against Kolkatta at the Eden Gardens Stadium, Kolkatta on Saturday.
Rajasthan opened their innings with S.Watson and Naman Ojha and they put on 59 runs for the first wicket when Watson was bowled by Shukla for 44 runs. Watson scored seven boundaries and a six in his well compiled 44.
The Kolkatta bowler Unadakt spell doom for Rajasthan as he bowled exceptionally well and packed Ojha, Y.Pathan and Raut back to the pavillion in quick succession.
Yusuf Pathan was brilliantly caught by Ganguly and it was the Karbonn Kamaal Catch. Though Kolkatta’s ground fielding was at times erratic, but catches win matches.
At that stage Rajasthan were a disasterous 101 for 5 and they lost wickets regularly thereafter. For Kolkatta team, Shane Bond took 1 for 24, Dhinda got 2 for 24 and Shukla got 1 for 20. The wrecker-in-chief however was Unadakt who got 3 for 26. Rajasthan Royals were thus wound up for a paltry score of 132 for 9 wickets requiring a target of 133 to win the match.
In reply thereto Kolkata lost the wickets of McCullum and Gayle very cheaply. McCullum scored 6 caught Watson bowled by Kamran and Gayle was bowled by Kamran Khan for a duck. Kolkatta went on the back foot thereafter and became slow and cautious in their approach.
Ganguly came out of the shell in the 11th over and stepped out to drive Pathan for 2 boundaries. He alongwith Pujara achieved the victory target with almost 4 overs to spare. Ganguly slammed consecutive boundaries off Trivedi and they both scored 15 runs off Fazal over. Ganguly’s 75 were punctuated with 11 fours and 2 sixes.
Kamran Khan was the only bowler for Rajasthan Royals who took 2 wickets for 13 runs.
Rajasthan Royals are out of contention for a place in the Semi Final line up though Kolkatta have an outside chance to capture a slot.
The award for the maximum sixes went to Saurav Ganguly.
The award for the Karbonn Kamaal Catch went to Saurav Ganguly.
The Man of the match was given to J.Unadakt.
Ravi Matah.