IPL 2020: RR vs KKR, Kolkata Knight Riders Thrashes Rajasthan Royals to Register Second Win of The Tournament

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) defeated Rajasthan Royals (RR) by 37 runs in the Indian Premier League (IPL) unilateral match on Wednesday, thanks to a stunning performance of the young bowlers after Shubman Gill’s batting. Batting first, KKR scored 174 for six with Gill’s 47 runs. In response, the Royals could only manage 137 runs for nine wickets. In the time of crisis, all eyes were on Rahul Tewatia, who performed a miracle with the bat against Kings XI Punjab in the last match, but he could not repeat his performance.

Tom Curran remained not out on 54 off 36 balls with two fours and three sixes. For KKR, young Indian bowlers Shivam Mavi, Kamlesh Nagerkoti and Varun Chakraborty took two wickets each. There was no major partnership for the Royals and it was a very bad start.

In the second over, IPL’s most expensive foreign player Pat Cummins sent captain Steve Smith (three) to the pavilion. Mavi gave the Royals the strongest blow by taking the wicket of in-form wicketkeeper-batsman Sanju Samson on the very first ball of the fifth over.

Opener Jose Butler (21) dismissed by Mavi’s. Robin Uthappa’s poor form continued, scoring just two runs and gave a simple catch to Mavi on the ball of Nagarkoti. At the same time, Ryan Parag (one) failed for the second consecutive time, caught by Gill on the ball of Nagarkoti.

Rahul Tewatia, who hit five sixes in an over against Punjab, had his eyes all set and hit a six to Nagarkoti but was bowled by Varun Chakraborty for 14 off 10 balls. Varun makes Jofra Archer the second hunt and it was meaningless to expect a miracle from the tail batsmen.

Earlier, for the Royals, Archer took two wickets for 18 runs and bowled the fastest ball of the tournament (152.1 km/h). He proved the fielding decision of captain Steve Smith correct by dismissing in-form opener Shubman Gill (47 off 34 balls) and captain Dinesh Karthik (one).

Aggressive batsman Andre Russell also failed and couldn’t contribute much to team’s score and back to the pavilion on 24 runs off 14 balls. England’s World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan remained not out till the end by scoring 34 off 23 balls.

Man of the Match

Young Shivam Mavi from Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) is named Man of the Match for his tight spell. Mavi took 2 wickets in four overs for 20 runs with an economy of 5.00 and including 13 dot balls in his spell.

Young @ShivamMavi23 from @KKRiders is named Man of the Match or his tight spell against #RR #Dream11IPL #RRvKKR pic.twitter.com/TMqaLOBcVg

— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) September 30, 2020

Playing XI

Kolkata Knight Riders

Shubman Gill, Sunil Narine, Nitish Rana, Dinesh Karthik (wk/c), Eoin Morgan, Andre Russell, Pat Cummins, Shivam Mavi, Kuldeep Yadav, Varun Chakravarthy, Kamlesh Nagarkoti

Rajasthan Royals

Jos Buttler (w), Steven Smith (c), Sanju Samson, Rahul Tewatia, Robin Uthappa, Riyan Parag, Jofra Archer, Tom Curran, Shreyas Gopal, Ankit Rajpoot, Jaydev Unadkat