Andre Russell’s yet another all-round display of 2/22 and a 19-ball 45 went in vain as Kolkata Knight Riders crashed to a 75-run loss.
Lucknow Super Giants posted 176-7 on the back of Quinton de Kock’s 29-ball 50 and the bowlers responded by bowling out KKR in just 14.3 overs as Avesh Khan and Jason Holder bagged three-wickets apiece.
Chasing after opting to bowl first, the Knight Riders slumped to their lowest powerplay score of the season - 25 for 3 and were later struggling at 69 for 5 as top four out of five batters were dismissed for single digits.
Russell bludgeoned 25 runs off the ninth over consisting of three sixes and a four off his Caribbean counterpart Jason Holder as he fought against the odds with the asking rate climbing to 12 an over but he, too, fell in the thirteenth over holing out to third man. His knock consisted three fours and five sixes.
Sunil Narine chipped in with a 12-ball 22 and surpassed 1000 runs in the IPL and KKR in the process before the side was bundled out for 101 in the fifteenth over.
"They outplayed us in both the departments - batting and bowling," admitted skipper Shreyas Iyer. "We are not able to capitalize on the small things. In the middle overs we have been bowling amazing, just that we need to do well in the powerplay and in the death overs. We need to assess that and bounce back. In the next three games we need to do that."
With the ball, the Knight Riders started off on a good note as Iyer ran out the LSG skipper KL Rahul, who did not face a single ball, off the fifth delivery of the match but de Kock and Deepak Hooda ensured there were no further blemishes in the powerplay as they raced to 66-1, the highest powerplay score at the venue this season.
The duo put on 71 runs for the second wicket as they regularly punished the width on offer with de Kock taking on the short boundary with his characteristic pulls whenever the ball was dug in short. In the process, he brought up his 19th half-century off 27 deliveries, hitting four fours and three sixes, but fell two balls later, spooning Sunil Narine to long-off in the eighth over.
His wicket allowed KKR to crawl back into the game as the bowlers stemmed the run flow. The middle-overs (7-15) saw them concede just three fours and a six as the Super Giants could manage just 57 runs losing de Kock, Hooda (41) and Krunal Pandya. While Narine accounted for de Kock, Russell bagged the other two in his back-to-back overs.
As their run-rate dipped below eight, Shivam Mavi was hit for five sixes in the penultimate over with Marcus Stoinis caught at deep midwicket after hitting the first three and later Jason Holder struck two to propel the Super Giants to 176 for 7.
