Kolkata: Two time IPL champions Kolkata Knight Riders beat defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad by 17 runs in an Indian Premier League encounter in Kolkata on Saturday.
Chasing a big target of 173 runs to win, Warner’s men could only reach to 155 for six wickets in their allotted 20 overs. Kolkata bowlers displayed tremendous performance in the field to restrict the visitors on 155 at the Eden Gardens.
For SRH, David Warner and Yuvraj Singh top scored with identical 26 each.
Earlier, put in to bat by Sunrisers, Robin Uthappa struck a gritty 68 from 39 balls to help KKR recover from a jittery start and post 172 for 6.
The two-time champions had the worst start of the season with just 40 for 2 in the Powerplay after Bhuvneshwar Kumar (3/20) and Rashid Khan (1/29) dismissed Sunil Narine and Gautam Gambhir respectively in six overs.
However, Sunrisers failed to make further in-roads in the middle overs with the Karnataka duo of Uthappa and Manish Pandey putting on a solid 77-run partnership from 52 balls.
Uthappa struck four sixes and five boundaries while Pandey cleverly rotated the strikes as Kolkata reached 100 in 12.4 overs.
After Uthappa’s departed, Pandey (46 from 35 balls; 3×4, 2×6) looked to break free but Bhuvneshwar denied him a second successive fifty.
In an exceptional display during the death bowling, Bhuvneshwar also cleaned up Colin de Grandhomme for a duck with an inswining yorker.
Orange Cap holder for being the current leading run- getter of season 10, Gambhir, was cleaned up by Afghan legspinner Khan in his first over for 15 runs.
Promoting Narine as-an-opener strategy did not work this time around as Bhuvneshwar brilliantly set him up before castling him with a yorker.
The left-hander, who took the IPL by storm with his 18- ball 37 as an opener to set up an eight-wicket win over Kings XI Punjab two days ago at the same venue, looked out of sorts with Bhuvneshwar bowling him round the wicket.
Bhuvneshwar had an excellent first spell of 2-0-7-1 as KKR faced 14 dot balls inside four overs to be at 20 for one.
Sunrisers captain Warner brought in his trump card — spinner Khan — in the last over before Powerplay and the legspinner struck again in his first over with the big wicket of Gambhir.
Khan started off with seven runs from his first three balls with Uthappa hammering him for a six over long-on.
Gambhir also looked to break free but the ball went straight to unsettle his middle-stump.
But all the good work by Bhuvneshwar and Khan was undone by the likes of Ashish Nehra (1/35), who bowled three wides and Moises Henriques whose selection in place of Bangladeshi off-cutter specialist Mustafizur Rahman raised a few eyebrows.
Henriques was the most expensive Sunrisers bowler, conceding 26 from his two overs.