Achi news desk-
Kolkata: Kolkata Knight Riders started their IPL campaign with a win. They managed to beat Sunrisers Hyderabad by 4 runs in a tight match at Eden on Saturday.
The Sunrisers captain, Pat Cummins, decided to bowl first to deliver the blow. KKR did not get off to a good start. Sunil Narine (2), Venkatesh Iyer (7), Shreyas Iyer (0), Nitish Rana (9) – these top four batsmen failed on the day.
However, due to the innings of Phil Salt (54), Andre Russell (64 off 25 balls), Ramandeep Singh (35) and Rinku Singh (23), KKR scored 208 runs after losing 7 wickets in 20 overs. Among Hyderabad bowlers, T Natarajan took 3 wickets, Mayank Markande 2 and Cummins 1.
The two openers Mayank Agarwal (32) and Abhishek Sharma (32) started well for Sunrisers playing with the same target. As soon as they came out, the run rate dropped a bit. Rahul Tripathi was dismissed for 20 and Aiden Markram for 18 runs. When they returned to the changing room, Heinrich Klassen and Abdul Samad (15) were leading the innings. Klassen was in a destructive mood. He scored 63 runs off just 29 balls. Shahbaz Ahmed made it 16.
At one point it seemed that Sunrisers would win the match. But from there Harshit Rana brought KKR back into the game. Shahbaz and Klassen rose in the last turn. Hyderabad needed five runs to win off the last ball. But Cummins failed to pick it up. They got stuck on 204 runs for 7 wickets in 20 overs. KKR won the match by 4 runs. Bazigar is delighted that the team won in a match that was almost lost. He took 3 wickets for 33 runs in 4 overs.
