Kolkata Knight Riders beats Chennai Super Kings by six wickets

CHENNAI: An all-round dominant show enabled Kolkata Knight Riders to beat Chennai Super Kings by six wickets in the IPL at the MA Chidambaram Stadium here on Sunday.

A win for Chennai would have lifted it to the top of the table, but it continues to remain at second in the table with 15 points from 13 games. Kolkata recorded its sixth win in 13 matches and moved up to seventh.

Set to chase a tricky total of 145 on a pitch not conducive for strokeplay, Kolkata batters Rinku Singh and captain Nitish Rana slammed half-centuries to turn the chase into a cakewalk. Kolkata got off to a shaky start with Chennai’s Deepak Chahar providing the initial breakthroughs removing Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Jason Roy and Venkatesh Iyer with the team total on 33.

At that stage, it looked as if Chennai would succeed in defending much like it did against Delhi Capitals in its previous match at the same venue on May 10.

But Rinku and Rana added a match-winning 99 runs for the fourth wicket before the former was run-out with his team needing only 13 runs from 17 balls. Rinku scored 54 (43b, 4x4, 3x6) and Rana was unbeaten on 57 (44b, 6x4, 1x6).

Earlier, a vital 68-run partnership between Shivam Dube and Ravindra Jadeja helped Chennai post a par score of 144 for six. Chennai got off to a quick start reaching 50 in 5.1 overs but from there on the batters found it increasingly difficult to accumulate runs on what looked a sluggish wicket.

Perhaps being aware that batting will become even more of a laborious task as the match wore on, Chennai captain MS Dhoni had no hesitation in opting to bat first.

Openers Ruturaj Gaikwad and Devon Conway continued their good run in the first few overs and one feature that stood out in their association was the presence of mind when it came to running between the wickets.

Ruturaj was also the more aggressive of the two and looked good for a big score before he got out to Varun Chakravarthy for 17 (13b, 2x4). Chennai scored 52 in powerplay and it was ‘local boy’ Chakravarthy who disrupted the host’s rhythm when he got rid of the in-form Ajinkya Rahane for 16 (11b, 1x4, 1x6).

It was then that the left-hand pair of Dube and Jadeja got together and made sure that their team would have a respectable total to defend in an enterprising partnership. Dube scored 48 (34b, 1x4, 3x6) was particularly severe on Suyash Sharma striking two sixes in the 17th over. Chennai scored 44 runs in the last four overs.

BRIEF SCORES: Chennai Super Kings 144/6 in 20 overs (S Dube 48) lost to Kolkata Knight Riders 147/4 in 18.3 overs (N Rana 57*, R Singh 54, D Chahar 3/27)