Kolkata Knight Riders jumped to second spot in the team standings after Yusuf Pathan powered them to an eight-wicket win against Rising Pune Supergiants in a rain-affected tie at Kolkata on Saturday.
Yusuf Pathan (37 off 18) helped KKR make short work of the Duckworth-Lewis target of 66 runs. The hosts had nine overs to get home but Pathan ensured they raced to the finishing line in just five overs.
The start to the short chase was exciting with Pune’s premier spinner Ravichandran Ashwin dismissing openers Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir in the very first over of the innings.
In walked Pathan and tilted the game in his team’s favour by hammering Ashwin for two sixes and as many fours in his second over, also settling the nerves in the KKR dug out.
Eventually, he got the team home comfortably with the company of Manish Pandey (15 off 10).
Earlier, KKR had Pune in a real spot of bother with the visitors struggling to 103/6 in 17.4 overs when rain interrupted play at the Eden Gardens.
Legspinner Piyush Chawla claimed 2/21 with 13 dot balls while offie Sunil Narine, returning after two matches, gave away a miserly 10 runs from 3.4 overs bowling 14 dot balls to win the spin battle against MS Dhoni and Company.
With KKR spinners making full use of the conditions, the otherwise devastating Dhoni crawled to eight runs from 22 balls, as his counterpart Gautam Gambhir relished the challenge, deploying four fielders around the Indian skipper.
Pune at one stage were at 70/3 and when Dhoni walked in, they were 74/4 in 10.3 overs but by the time the rain interrupted the proceedings their run-rate had slipped to less than six.
Opting to bat on a turning surface, Pune failed to get going at the top with Russell getting the first breakthrough in the third over.
Trying to hit across the line, Rahane (2) played on a wide delivery as Russell gave KKR a perfect start, who was bowling in tandem with Morne Morkel for four overs.
Aussie duo of Usman Khawaja and George Bailey perished to spinners after Gambhir introduced Shakib in the fifth over.
Khawaja (21 from 17 balls; 3x4) was playing freely but the Bangladeshi left-arm spinner dismissed the Aussie in his first over when the left-hander smacked a delivery straight to Suryakumar Yadav at square-leg.
The pitch started turning and there was an all-spin attack from both ends with Chawla introduced in the 11th over. The leg-spinner got Bailey (33 from 27 balls; 3x4, 1x6) stumped with a brilliant delivery.
In between rookie medium pacer Ankit Rajpoot, playing his first match this season, removed Saurabh Tiwary as Dhoni promoted Irfan Pathan at No 5 to step up their run-rate.
Irfan Pathan got runout when he sacrificed his wicket for Dhoni with utter confusion taking place between the two.
(With inputs from PTI)
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