As was thought by most, it was too good to be real for the Kolkata Knight Riders. After a dream start to their campaign in IPL III, the wooden-spooners of Season II were brought down to earth by a tenacious Chennai Super Kings at Eden Gardens on Tuesday night. The home team lost by 55 runs. What’s more, they failed to last the full quota of 20 overs.
Chasing a none-too-formidable target of 165, Knight Riders got off to a horrible start, with openers — Brad Hodge and Manoj Tiwary — back in the dugout within the first two overs.
From then, the Knight Riders tried hard for runs but with very little success. The team’s struggle was epitomised by skipper Sourav Ganguly himself who had scored one run in 11 balls. The skipper eventually got out for 11 runs (off 20 balls) but he was not the only batsman to be blamed.
Everyone, including the heroes from Match One — Angelo Mathews and Owais Shah — failed to deliver. Only four batsmen, Wriddhiman Saha (22) Murali Kartik (21) and LR Shukla (19) besides Ganguly, managed to register double-digit scores. The Knight Riders were eventually all out for 109 in 19.2 overs.
For Chennai, Justin Kemp was the most successful bowler with three wickets. The South African conceded only 12 runs in three overs. The other successful bowlers were Albie Morkel, Manpreet Singh Gony, Lakshmipathy Balaji and Muttiah Muralitharan.
It was the first win for the Chennai team, who were semifinalists last year and finalists in IPL-I.
Earlier, skipper MS Dhoni plundered an unbeaten 66 from 33 balls and added 109 runs with S Badrinath (43 not out) for the fourth wicket to help Chennai Super Kings post a challenging total.
Dhoni hit six fours and three sixes in his explosive knock while Badrinath hit three fours and one six from 33 balls as the duo amassed 109 runs in 65 balls in their unbeaten partnership.
Batting with disdain, the Indian skipperdismantled the KKR attack as the home side conceded 58 runs in the last five overs as CSK, after opting to bat first, recovered from a slow start.
The Knight Riders had a disciplined start with their new recruit Shane Bond bowling a tidy fast bowling spell with the new ball as he began his IPL stint conceding just one run from his first over.
At the other end, Ishant Sharma tested Murali Vijay, who had a couple of lucky boundaries but it was the New Zealander who really gave the former Australian opener Matthew Hayden some anxious time. Preferring not to use his mongoose bat, Hayden batted with the conventional willow and took seven balls to open his account. Hayden, the Orange Cap holder of Season II, has scored only 18 runs in two games so far.
The pressure created by Bond, who had a tidy two-over spell giving away just seven runs, was enough to panic Hayden who played on to his stumps in Ishant’s first ball of the second over.
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