BENGALURU, April 5: Andre Russell came up with another sensational display of power hitting to fire Kolkata Knight Riders to a five-wicket win over Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League here on Friday.
Needing 66 runs off 24 balls, KKR were up against it before Russell came in and smashed an unbeaten 48 off 13 balls to complete the job with five balls to spare. His breathtaking knock comprised seven sixes and one four.
Russell�s brutal hitting came after Virat Kohli (84 off 49) and AB de Villiers (63 off 32) recreated their �magic� with a delightful 108-run stand to take RCB to 205 for three.
The result means KKR have now won three out of their four games while RCB are have lost five in a row and are heading towards another sorry season.
KKR were kept alive in the chase through opener Chris Lynn (43 off 31), Robin Uthappa (33 off 25) and Nitish Rana (37 off 23) before Russell singlehandedly got the job done in the death overs. A pedestrian bowling effort from RCB pacers also helped KKR�s cause.
RCB spinners Pawan Negi (2/21) and Yuzvendra Chahal (1/24) bowled well and were able to generate sharp turn, putting brakes on the KKR scoring rate.
Earlier, Kohli and de Villiers hammered the bowlers at will during their entertaining stand. At one stage, it seemed RCB would get close to 250 but KKR did well to pull things back a bit on a batting beauty.
Scorecard
RCB innings: Parthiv Patel lbw b Nitish Rana 25, Virat Kohli c&b Kuldeep 84, AB de Villiers c Shubman Gill b Narine 63, Marcus Stoinis not out 28, Moeen Ali not out 0. Extras: (lb-1, w-4) 5. Total (for 3 wkts, 20 overs) 205. Fall of wickets: 64-1, 172-2, 185-3. Bowling: Prasidh Krishna 3-0-41-0, Piyush Chawla 4-0-32-0, Sunil Narine 4-0-30-1, Lockie Ferguson 2-0-32-0, Kuldeep Yadav 4-0-31-1, Nitish Rana 2-0-22-1, Andre Russell 1-0-16-0.
KKR innings: Chris Lynn b Negi 43, Sunil Narine c Negi b Navdeep Saini 10, Robin Uthappa c Southee b Negi 33, Nitish Rana c (sub)Klaasen b Chahal 37, Dinesh Karthik c Chahal b Navdeep Saini 19, Andre Russell not out 48, Shubman Gill not out 3. Extras 13 (lb-2, w-8, nb-3). Total: (for 5 wickets, 19.1 overs) 206. Fall of wickets: 28-1, 93-2, 108-3, 139-4, 153-5. Bowling: Tim Southee 4-0-61-0, Navdeep Saini 4-0-34-2, Yuzvendra Chahal 4-0-24-1, Mohammed Siraj 2.2-0-36-0, Pawan Negi 3.1-0-21-2, Marcus Stoinis 1.4-0-28-0. � PTI
