Kolkata: The fight for the final IPL playoffs place intensified as Kolkata Knight Riders rode forties from Manish Pandey and Rovman Powell to beat Mumbai Indians by four wickets here on Wednesday. Opting to field on a two-paced Eden Gardens pitch, KKR restricted Mumbai Indians to 147/8 in a rain-extended innings riding on two-wicket hauls from pacers Saurabh Dubey, Cameron Green and Kartik Tyagi while spinners Varun Chakravarthy, Anukul Roy and Sunil Narine combined to concede just 47 runs in nine overs.
Having performed that chokehold on Mumbai’s innings, KKR came out facing a required run rate of less than 7.5. Deepak Chahar straightaway put pressure on KKR by inducing an inside edge off Finn Allen’s bat back on to his stumps. Ajinkya Rahane showed some good form before being dismissed on 21, Green following soon after.
Pandey (45 off 33 balls) and Powell (40 off 30 balls) then added 64 runs for the fourth wicket before both departed in the space of three balls. Rinku Singh however stayed put to ensure KKR’s tally went up to 13 points with one match still remaining.
It was a closer affair than anticipated, and could have gone either way had Mumbai got some more runs. But they started on a shaky note, Ryan Rickelton scratching around for a while before swinging across the line and top-edging Green to Pandey at point. Green removed Naman Dhir three balls later but the crucial blow came in the form of Rohit Sharma’s dismissal when he misjudged a pull off Dubey and speared it into the sky.
Rain intervened right after Suryakumar Yadav was cleaned up by Dubey. The pace of the game didn’t pick up after resumption but at least Mumbai Indians were able to put up some resistance in the form of a 43-run stand between Hardik Pandya and Tilak Varma. Varma was dropped on 12 after Angkrish Raghuvanshi scampered from behind the stumps to clatter into Chakravarthy who had by then caught the ball off his own bowling.
Thankfully though, it didn’t cost KKR much as Varma was finally caught by Roy at the deep. This was when KKR were already making scoring extremely difficult, mainly through Narine who once again was exceptional in conceding only 13 runs in his four overs apart from dismissing Pandya. It was Corbin Bosch’s 18-ball 32 that gave some impetus to Mumbai’s innings, the last five overs yielding 53 runs to challenge KKR with a tricky chase.
