At the packed Eden Gardens yesterday, Shubman Gill made the most of his opportunity to help his team to victory over table-toppers Chennai.
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In their chase of a seemingly par target of 178, Kolkata Knight Riders suddenly found themselves in a spot of bother with K.M. Asif reducing the hosts to 40 for 2 inside five overs as Robin Uthappa was dismissed for six.
Dhoni counter-attacked with four sixes as he put on 54 with Ravindra Jadeja for the fifth wicket but, ultimately, Chennai lost their second game in three matches. To everyone’s surprise, Jadeja dropped Narine off the next ball as well. Getting the freedom to play my shots.
The 33rd match of the Indian Premier League is between Kolkata Knight Riders and Chennai Super Kings.
Watson’s 40-ball 78 in the last encounter underlined the fact that his big-hitting skills are still in the right place despite being on the wrong side of 30 and along with South African skipper Faf Du Plessis, they make a deadly combination at the top.
Du Plessis (27) was the more aggressive of the two initially, riding his luck, before being bowled by Piyush Chawla in the final over of the powerplay.
The star of India’s U-19 World Cup winning team became fourth-youngest to score an IPL half-century, after his India Under-19 team-mate Prithvi Shaw, Sanju Samson and Rishabh Pant.
IPL 2018 KKR vs CSK live streaming will be provided by official broadcasters.
Earlier CSK failed to boost their run rate as the KKR bowlers maintained a good line and length and did not allow much width to the batsmen to free their arms. As he often does, he took his time to gauge the conditions and then when Mavi and Mitchell Johnson tried to test him with the short ball, he clattered them into the stands.
Nitish Rana being out with injury meant Gill could come at No. 4 and build the innings.
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“When the two youngsters were at the crease (Singh is 20), we looked at it as a time to put pressure…” Their bowling unit, however, failed to defend the total as KKR won with six wickets in hand and 14 balls to spare. Playing at home, the Kolkata Knightriders had a flawless chase on a completely flat track to win their first match of the tournament and with that move to the third place in the table.
