Kolkata Knight Riders suffered their second defeat in a row to Delhi Capitals in match no. 26 of Vivo IPL 2019 at Eden Gardens.
Russell scored his sixth consecutive 40 plus score. Young Shubman Gill made a well paced half-century, but KKR were never in the game in the second innings and lost the match by 7 wickets.
Shreyas Iyer won the toss and chose to field first. Dinesh Karthik made three changes to the playing eleven. Chris Lynn, Sunil Narine and Harry Gurney were replaced by Joe Denly, Carlos Brathwaite and Lockie Ferguson. There was only one change in the Capitals’ first eleven. Keemo Paul came in for Sandeep Lamichhane.
Joe Denly and Shubman Gill were the new opening pair for KKR. Denly got out in the first ball of the match to a superb delivery from Ishant Sharma. Robin Uthappa and Shubman added 63 runs for the second wicket before the former threw his wicket away. Nitish Rana’s poor form continued as he got cleaned up by Morris' perfect yorker.
Shubman scored a well-deserved half-century before getting out a bad delivery down the leg-side. Skipper Dinesh Karthik came after Andre Russell but could only play three balls before getting out cheaply to Kagiso Rabada.
Once again, thanks to late fireworks from Dre Russ took KKR's total to 178 for 7. A total that looked below par as per the pitch report earlier.
Chasing 178, Prithvi Shaw and Shikhar Dhawan gave the visitors a flying start. DK took a sharp catch to dismiss Shaw off Prasidh’s bowling. Playing his 50th IPL match for KKR, Andre Russell managed to find an edge off Iyer's bat in the last over of the powerplay to put some pressure on DC.
Kuldeep, Chawla and Rana tried to sneak a few overs in between, but a well set Dhawan and Rishabh Pant put up a 105-run partnership for the third wicket and took the game away from us.
Pant was the last man to go and DC chased the total with seven balls in hand. In the end, Dhawan’s 97 in a solid run chase helped the visitors to their fourth IPL 2019 win.
KKR are still at the second spot on the points table and they will have everything to play for against table-toppers Chennai Super Kings on Sunday, March 14 at 4 pm.
