Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Royal Challengers Bangalore by 21 runs in a high-scoring match at M Chinnaswamy Stadium. Spinners Varun Chakaravarthy and Suyash Sharma collectively took five wickets while Andre Russell picked two wickets for Kolkata. An aggressive 56 from Jason Roy and a quick 48 from captain Nitish Rana, along with unbeaten cameos from Rinku Singh and David Wiese propelled Kolkata Knight Riders to 200/5. In response, Royal Challengers Bangalore scored 179/8 despite captain Virat Kohli’s 54 and Mahipal Lomror impressing in an 18-ball 34.
Chasing 201, Kohli and Faf du Plessis took a boundary each off Vaibhav Arora in the opening over. Du Plessis’s stay came to an end in the third over, holing out to long-on off a flighted googly from Suyash. Kohli continued to pull off him and Chakaravarthy for boundaries, though Suyash struck by trapping Shahbaz Ahmad lbw. In the last over of power-play, Kolkata struck again when Glenn Maxwell hit a slower delivery from Chakravarthy straight to mid-off.
Lomror broke a sedate period for Bangalore by sweeping fiercely off Nitish Rana for four, followed by muscling a brace of sixes through the leg-side off Sunil Narine. Kohli got a boundary on a thick outside edge off Suyash and took off for a brace on the very next ball to reach his fifty in 33 balls. Lomror pulled Chakaravarthy for a six over deep mid-wicket, but the spinner bounced back as the left-handed batter holed out to the same region.
Though Dinesh Karthik and Suyash Prabhudessai hit a boundary each, the latter being slow in taking the second run resulted in his run-out at the non-striker’s end. Kolkata ended Bangalore’s last hope for a victory by having Wanindu Hasaranga and Karthik caught in the deep in successive overs, making the result a foregone conclusion.
