Kolkata | Shardul Thakur’s stormy innings of 9 fours and 3 sixes on the home ground at Eden Gardens, 68 runs in just 29 balls and brilliant bowling by the spin trio, KKR easily defeated RCB by 81 runs and registered first victor in IPL-23. Apart from Shardul Thakur for KKR, Gurbaj scored 57 and Rinku Singh scored 46 runs. KKR scored a mammoth score of 204 for the loss of 7 wickets in the stipulated 20 overs. Chasing 204 runs, RCB team which registered an easy win over Mumbai Indians in the first match, could not stand in front of KKR’s spin trio and the whole team returned to the pavilion for just 123 runs, Varun Chakraborty took 4 for 15, Sunil Narine took 2 for 16 runs and young leg-spinner Suyash Sharma took 3 wickets by giving 30 runs. For RCB, only Faf du plessis 23 and Virat Kohli 21 could only showed some resistance. Shardul Thakur was awarded man of the match for his brilliant innings.
Brief Scores:
KKR: 7/204 over 20, Shardul Thakur 68, Gurbaj 57, Rinku Singh 46, David Billy 2/16, Karan Sharma 2/26
RCB: 10/123 over 17.4, Faf du Plessis 23, Virat Kohli 21, Varun Chakravarthy 4/15, Sunil Narine 2/16, Suyash Sharma 3/30