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Fixture & Results
Rana, Russell heroics in vain as Kohli's ton earns Bangalore second win
19th April 2019
Virat Kohli hit a magnificent century as Royal Challengers Bangalore beat Kolkata Knight Riders by 10 runs in an Indian Premier League match at Eden Gardens where total 400-plus runs were scored today.
Put to bat first RCB posted a mammoth 213/4 thanks to skipper Kohli's 100 off 58 balls and Moeen Ali's blistering 66 off 26 deliveries.
Kohli played an outstanding innings in which he completecompleted his first fifty off 40 balls while the second one came from only 17 deliveries.
While chasing Nitish Rana and Andre Russell almost chased down this mammoth target with their commendable efforts but fell short off just 10 runs as the home team slumped to fourth defeat in a row and stay at sixth position in the points table.
Dale Steyn made almost an immediate impact with the first ball in his first match for Bangalore after 10 years but Marcus Stoinis somehow dropped Chris Lynn who later went back on the last ball of that over.
After that Sunil Narine also gave away his wicket in desperation to play big shots as Parthiv Patel caught him off Navdeep Saini on 18.
Promoting youngster Shubman Gill also failed miserably as the Punjab batter became Steyn's second victim while experienced Robin Uthappa played a slow innings of 9 off 20 balls.
Rana and Russell stiched 118 runs off 48 balls to keep Kolkata in the contest till the fourth ball of the last over in a match that was looking like daydream for KKR till tenth over.
Rana played an superb innings of 85 off 46 runs while Russell showed off his ruthless batting skills with a quickfire 25-ball 65 which included 9 sixes.
Needing 43 runs off the final 2 overs Russell hit Stoinis for three back-to-back sixes to make it a close encounter but Moeen bowled the last over to somehow keep the Jamaican quite and help the visitors register theitheir second win ththis season.
Earlier Bangalore got off to a slow start, all credits goes to the KKR trio who bowled the powerplay and leaked only 42 runs and removed Parthiv Patel.
Karthik's decision to use spinner Sunil Narine along with two pacers Harry Gurney and Prasidh Krishna worked well primarily as the hosts kept Indian and RCB skipper Virat Kohli quite for a long time who later broke free to steamroll them later.
Nitish Rana caught Parthiv off Narine on 11 while Russell removed Akashdeep Nath (13) who was looking in good form to leave the hosts reeling on 59/2.
RCB amassed only 70 runs off first 10 overs and crossed hundred-run mark in the fourteenth over with a six hit by in-form Moeen Ali off struggling Kuldeep Yadav which initiated the massive coneback.
Despite a slow start RCB roared back in the game thanks to Moeen Ali's blistering 66 off 26 and skipper Kohli's magnificent century.
Kuldeep leaked 27 off his final over in which Moeen smashed him for 2 boundaries and 3 sixes and aas a consolation prize he removed the England player on the last ball.
But the damage was already done as RCB amassed 91 runs in the last five overs to reach a mammoth total of 213/4.
After Moeen's departure it was just Kohli show at the Eden Gardens as the RCB skipper led from the front to complete his fifth IPL hundred, which included 9 boundaries and 4 sixes.
Apart from Kuldeep other KKR bowlers also had a woeful day at work as Prasidh Krishna gave away 52 runs while Gurney and Narine leaked 42 and 32 runs in their quota of overs.
CAB MEDIA DESK
Rio Dutta
