Kolkata Knight Riders’ trusted allrounder Andre Russell dismissed Will Jacks and Rajat Patidar for 55 and 52 runs and brought KKR back into the game.
Andre Russell will always be a key player for the Kolkata Knight Riders either with bat or ball. In today’s game, Russell scored an unbeaten 27 from 20 deliveries and assisted the team to score 222 runs for 6 wickets loss at the end of 20 overs.
In this season, Russell played 7 matches and bagged 9 wickets and also scored 155 runs. In today’s game against RCB, Russell played a crucial role by dismissing the key middle-order batters and brought back KKR into the game.
Speaking on the game, Royal Challengers Bengaluru won the toss and opted to bowl first where Phil Salt and Narine opened the inning. The duo made a 56 runs stand for the first wicket and laid a decent foundation for KKR.
Siraj broke the opening partnership by dismissing Salt for 48 runs which he scored in just 14 deliveries. Following his dismissal, KKR middle order batters failed to build a partnership and lost their wickets for a cheap score.
With Shreyas Iyer‘s half-century, KKR positioned them in a comfortable position. Following his dismissal for 50 runs, Rinku Singh, Russell, and Ramandeep Singh scored 24, 27 and 24 runs respectively and led KKR to score 222 runs for 6 wickets loss at the end of 20 overs.
On the other hand, Royal Challengers Bengaluru lost their opening duo Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis for 18 and 7 runs respectively at an early stage of their 223 runs chasing game.
RCB just scored 35 runs at the time of Faf’s dismissal. After losing their key players at an early stage, RCB required building a crucial partnership to win the game at the Eden Garden.
Will Jacks and Rajat Patidar came as the saviour for the Men in Green and made a whopping 102 runs partnership for the 3rd wicket. The duo rained sixes all around the Eden Garden and posed a great threat to the host team.
While things were in the favour of Bengaluru, Russell made his way to bowl the 12th over of the game. Russell in his very first delivery dismissed Will Jacks and broke the well-settled partnership moreover in the 4th delivery of the same over, he dismissed Rajat Patidar and stunned everyone.
With the back-to-back wickets, RCB who were in a positive phase gets under pressure. Apart from the duo’s dismissal, RCB lost another two wickets in the form of Cameron Green(6) and Mahipal Lomror(4) while Suyash Prabhudessai and D Karthik were loaded with the match-winning responsibilities.
With Dinesh Karthik’s dismissal in the final ball of the 18th over, RCB’s dream of winning the game scattered. In the final over, Karn Sharma struck three sixes in four deliveries and showed some positive belief for RCB. But Starc dismissed Karn Sharma in the fifth delivery of the over and helped KKR to win the game by just 1 run.
