Unbeaten half-centuries from Jacques Kallis and Gautam Gambhir helped Kolkata Knight Riders stay afloat in the Champions League Twenty20.
Scoreboard
Unbeaten half-centuries from Jacques Kallis and Gautam Gambhir helped Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) stay afloat in the Champions League Twenty20. The duo added 109 runs for the second wicket to power their side to a nine-wicket win over Royal Challengers Bangalore at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium here on Thursday.
The win, achieved with over two overs to spare, was Kolkata’s first of the tournament. SRK’s boys now have two points from three matches and a big victory in their last encounter will keep them in hunt for a place in the semifinals.
For RCB, Thursday’s loss was their second in as many games. They now find themselves in a precarious position. RCB will now have to win both their remaining matches by huge margins and also hope for ‘favourable’ results from the other games in the group.
Meanwhile, Kallis, who had earlier done well with the ball, also hit the winning boundaries. He remained unbeaten on 64 (47 balls, 4x4, 1x6). Gambhir, on the other hand displayed his class by scoring 55 runs off just 32 balls. The knock was studded with three boundaries and four sixes.
Chasing 170, KKR’s openers didn’t allow the RCB bowlers to settle down. Brad Haddin was at his destructive best. He scored 42 runs off just 27 balls to help the visitors cross the 50-run mark in the sixth over. Haddin, who hit five boundaries and two sixes, was unlucky to miss out on a deserving half-century after he was caught by Virat Kohli off Daniel Vettori. But Haddin had already done the damage and RCB failed to recover from the early onslaught.
Earlier, put into bat first, RCB skipper Daniel Vettori played a captain’s knock (44 runs, 23 balls, 5x4, 2x6) as the hosts added 67 runs in the last five overs to post 169 for nine.
Brief scores: RCB 169/9 in 20 overs (D Vettori 44; I Abdulla 2/20) lost to KKR 171/1 in 17.3 overs (J Kallis 64*, G Gambhir 55*, B Haddin 42; D Vettori 1/27)
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