Argha Bhattacharya
Kolkata, April 30: In the absence of Sunil Narine, Brad Hogg stepped up for the Knight Riders (KKR) foxing the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) batsmen with his plethora of variations as the home team defeated the visitors by seven wickets at the Eden Gardens here Thursday.
Chasing a target of 166 runs, Robin Uthappa (80 n o, 58, 7×4, 1×6) and Andre Russell (59 n o, 32b, 5×4, 4×6) showed great composure adding 112 runs in 64 balls for the fourth wicket to ease past the yellow brigade’s total with one ball to spare. For the first time in this IPL, Uthappa recaptured his last edition’s form while Russell was at his murderous best as he toyed with the bowlers with some raw power hitting. All the CSK bowlers were expensive and even though Mohit Sharma, Ronit More and Pawan Negi got a wicket each it was not enough for their team.
Earlier, Brendon McCullum (32, 12b, 3×4, 3×6) went full throttle against Pat Cummins as CSK started off all guns blazing. But Hogg (4/29) dismissed the dangerous looking McCullum by trapping him in front of the wicket in the sixth over of the match. He then got Faf du Plessis (20) stumped with the wrong one. Piyush Chawla then got into the act by cleaning up skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni (1) to reduce CSK to 72 for five.
Dwayne Bravo (30, 32b, 4×4) and Ravidra Jadeja (24, 30b, 1×4, 1×6) then mustered up a 57-run stand for the sixth wicket playing with caution to take CSK to a competitive total. Bravo was lucky on two occasions when he was dropped by Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir. Andre Russell (2/20) then knocked him over in the 17 over.
Brief scores
CSK 165 for nine (Brendon McCullum 32, Dwayne Bravo 30; Brad Hogg 4/29) lost to KKR 169 for three (Robin Uthappa 80 n o, Andre Russell 59 n o) by seven wickets.
