Kolkata Knight Riders suffered their second loss of Vivo IPL 2019 to Chennai Super Kings after a poor show with the bat at Chepauk last night.

 

MS Dhoni won the toss and asked KKR to bat first on a slow wicket. The wicket was also expected to help the batsmen during the chase with dew playing a major role. Both teams went with an unchanged line-up from their previous match.

 

KKR had the worst possible start to the innings and lost three wickets in three overs. Lynn (0) was caught LBW in first. Harbhajan dismissed Narine (6) in the second. Nitish Rana (0) mis-timed one of Chahar's straight to mid-wicket in the third over.

 

Robin Uthappa (11) went for a few strokes in the fifth over before becoming Chahar's third wicket of the night. Dhoni brought Tahir into the attack in the ninth over. The leggie ended Dinesh Karthik's (19) resistance and followed up with Shubman’s (9) wicket in his next over.

 

Andre Russell (50*) held his fort at one end but was running out of partners. The Jamaican ended up scoring a half-century with a boundary from the last bowl of the innings. This was his third fifty in last three innings he batted against CSK.

 

During the second innings, Dinesh Karthik went with his most experienced bowler, Piyush Chawla. The move didn't pay off well as the leggie went for 12 runs. It was Sunil Narine who gave KKR their first breakthrough with the wicket of Shane Watson (17). The off-spinner striked back in his second over and scalped Suresh Raina (14), thanks to a brilliant running catch by Piyush Chawla.

 

CSK batters took their time in the middle as they had little to chase and plenty of balls remaining. Faf du Plessis (43*) and Kedar Jadhav (8*) remained unbeaten as they completed the chase in 17.2 overs.

 

After a run of 4 away games, our Knights will play Delhi Capitals next at Eden Gardens on April 12, Friday. The team knows how to bounce back and we’ve done that in the past. DK and his Knights will be pretty confident about doing it again in front of their most beloved Kolkata crowd.

 

Brief Scores:

KKR: 108 for 9 in 20 Overs (Russell 50*, Karthik19, Chahar 3/20)

CSK: 111 for 3 in 17.2 Overs (Du Plessis 43*, Rayudu 21, Narine 2/24)