On Wednesday, Kolkata Knight Riders emerged victorious over Royal Challengers Bangalore by a margin of 21 runs, marking their return to winning ways in the IPL.
Despite chasing a target of 201 runs, RCB could only manage 179 for 8 in their allotted 20 overs. Varun Chakravarthy was the standout performer for KKR, taking 3 wickets for 27 runs, while Suyash Sharma and Andre Russell also contributed with two wickets each.
Although Virat Kohli played well, scoring 54 runs off 37 balls with six fours, his efforts were in vain as the rest of the RCB batting lineup failed to support him and forge partnerships.
One bright spot for RCB was Mahipal Lomror, who scored 34 runs off 18 balls with three sixes and a four while adding 55 runs with Kohli for the fourth wicket.
KKR’s impact substitute Suyash Sharma also had a good outing, snaffling the wickets of Faf du Plessis and Shahbaz Ahmed inside the powerplay to return with figures of 4-0-30-2.
Russell also contributed to KKR’s victory by dismissing Kohli and Wanindu Hasaranga and taking two wickets for 29 runs.
Virat Kohli was unhappy with team’s performance and stated that RCB did deserve to lose –
To be honest we handed them the game. We did deserve to lose. We handed them a victory. We were certainly not up to standard. If you look at the game, we didn’t capitalize our chances. We dropped a few chances which cost us 25-30 runs. We set up ourselves really well. We ended up hitting the fielder to balls which weren’t wicket taking. It is what’s on the scoreboard and how to get them. Even while chasing, despite losing wickets we were one partnership away from being in the game. We needed one partnership to get us home. We need to be switched on and not give away soft plays. We have won one and lost one on the road. It is not something that is making us nervous. We need to win some away games to be in good shape for the later stages of the tournament.
