Kolkata Knight Riders First Victory On 18th IPL Match
Kolkata Knight Riders Beat Rajasthan Royals By 8 wickets: Former champions Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have registered their first win in the ongoing IPL. On Wednesday, the team opened their points account by defeating defending champions Rajasthan Royals by 8 wickets. On the other hand, Rajasthan is at the bottom of the table after suffering their second defeat in two matches.
Yesterday, (26 March), Rajasthan had set a target of just 152 runs to win. Kolkata achieved it with just 15 balls to spare, losing just 2 wickets. Moeen Ali (5) and captain Ajinkya Rahane (18) failed. However, opener Quinton de Kock (97) and impact player Angakris Raghuvanshi (22) put on 83 runs for the unbroken third wicket to give Kolkata an easy victory. The unbeaten de Kock sealed Kolkata’s victory by slicing through Jofra Archer, but was just three runs shy of his century with no more runs on the board.
Rajasthan, who had won the toss and elected to bat, scored a respectable score of 54 runs for the loss of one wicket in the power play. But then, they were caught in the spin net of Moeen Ali and Varun Chakravarthy and suddenly faced disaster. They were in trouble after losing 5 wickets in just 49 runs. They even fought for every run. As a result, they struggled for 82 runs in 11 overs after losing half their team. Even after this, the wicket-falling trend of this team did not stop. Along with impact player Shubham Dubey (9), the entire middle and lower order of this team completely surrendered to the Kolkata bowlers. Therefore, Rajasthan was in danger of touching 150 runs.
Then, in the last two overs, Jofra Archer hit two sixes and scored 16* runs from just 7 balls and reached 151/9 at the usual time. Which was the lowest team score of the current IPL. Varun and Moin bowled 8 overs and took 4 wickets for just 40 runs. This was the main difference between the two teams. On the other hand, none of the Rajasthan players could touch a half-century, while wicketkeeper Dhruv Jurel top-scored with 33 runs. The team was in trouble due to the failure of interim captain Ryan Parag in consecutive matches.
Brief scores: Rajasthan Royals – 151/9 in 20 overs (Dhruv Jurel 33, Yashasvi Jaiswal 29, Ryan Parag 25, Varun Chakravarthy 2/17, Moin Ali 2/23, Vaibhav Arora 2/33, Harshit Rana 2/36). Kolkata Knight Riders 153/2 in 17.3 overs (Quinton de Kock 97, Angakris Raghuvanshi 22, Wanindu Hasaranga 1/34).
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