Nitish Hits 80 but SRH’s Late Surge Helps Restrict KKR to 187/6
Nitish Rana scored 80 in KKR’s IPL opener against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
Nitish Rana blasted a 56-ball 80 to help Kolkata Knight Riders post 187/6 vs Sunrisers Hyderabad after being put into bat first at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Chennai on Sunday evening.
While Rana was on a scoring-spree, Sunrisers Hyderabad got back into the game by taking five wickets in the last five overs and conceding just 42 runs.
KKR looked set for a total well above the 200-run mark when their top order batsmen Nitish Rana (80), Rahul Tripathi (53) and Shubman Gill (15) took on the SRH bowlers. However, SRH's Afghanistan duo Rashid Khan (2/24) and Mohammad Nabi (2/32) led the way in the death overs.
Though his opening partner Shubman Gill fell on a 15 in the 7th over, Rana soldiered on and forged a solid 50-ball 93-run second wicket partnership with Rahul Tripathi.
From 53/1 in 6.6 overs, the pair took KKR to 146/2 by 15.2 overs.
While Rashid Khan picked the first wicket on Gill, T Natarajan got SRH the big breakthrough with the wicket of Tripathi that also stemmed the flow of runs.
Andre Russell played all of 5 deliveries before becoming Rashid’s second wicket of the match and KKR were down to 157/3 in 16.2 overs.
In the 18th, Mohammad Nabi bowled his last over of the innings and picked up two major wickets - Nitish Rana on 80 and the KKR captain Eoin Morgan on 2.
A late surge by Dinesh Karthik added 22 runs off 9 deliveries and Bhuvneshwar Kumar added one wicket to his column, picking the wicket of Shakib-al-Hasan off the last ball of the innings.
KKR posted 187/6.
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