Williamson, Shakib power SRH beat KKR by five wickets at Eden Gardens

Chasing a low target of 139 at the iconic ground, Williamson and his team took an over less than 20 to reach home. They scored 139/9 in 19 overs.

Surviving the middle over jitters, Williamson and Shakib played some brilliant strokes in different parts of the ground to destabilise the KKR bowling, which was looking good at some point to make a difference in the match, boasting on their leading spinners Sunil Narine and Kuldeep Yadav.

But the KKR bowling unit looked average in front of Williamson’s powerful knock of 50 runs.

Shakib, the Bangladeshi veteran, hit two fours and one six to contribute 27 runs to the final scorecard. He took 21 balls to score the number of runs.

Though the first three overs were dominated by Sunrisers batsmen, Sunil Narine gave a breather to KKR by dismissing Wriddhiman Saha (24) and Shikhar Dhawan (7).

Narine ended up his bowling quota by conceding just 17 runs in four overs at a superb economy rate of 4.25.

To put the visitors into more trouble, Kuldeep Yadav picked Manish Pandey leg before wicket at four runs, reducing the visitors’ total to 55/3 at 8.4 overs. Kuldeep gave away 23 runs in his four overs.

Earlier with brilliant bowling and fielding performances, Sunrisers Hyderabad restricted Kolkata Knight Riders to just 138/8 in 20 overs

Losing the toss and coming out to bat, KKR struggled in the middle overs by losing wickets at regular intervals, without any major match-turning partnership.

In a rain-interrupted first half, Chris Lynn came to bat with Robin Uthappa for the first time in this edition of IPL, leaving Sunil Narine in the dugout.

Unlike the previous matches, KKR made a slow start by registering just one run in the first over bowled by Bhuvneshwar Kumar. However, the sloth was not too long as Lynn was on fire in the second over only, as he smashed two back to back boundaries to get the scoreboard moving.

Uthappa, however, failed to capitalise on his return to the opening slot as he was caught behind by local boy Wriddhiman Saha in the third over for just three runs. Bhuvneshwar clichéd the first wicket for SRH in the form of Uthappa.

However, the fall of Uthappa’s wicket did not perturb Lynn’s momentum as he kept on hammering the ball in different parts of the ground. He was joined by Nitish Rana, who too scored couple of boundaries and a huge six before the end of the powerplay.

Narine arrived at the crease after Lynn-Rana partnership of 39 runs was ended by Billy Stanlake, who took two wickets in the match. Rana was dismissed at 18 runs.

After the back to back fall of Narine’s and Rana’s wickets followed by Lynn (47), KKR was certainly in a spot of bother when the home team was reduced to 87/4 at 12.2 overs.

Lynn, who took 34 balls to score 47, crafted his innings with seven fours and one six.

Lynn was caught and bowled by Shakib, who picked two wickets for 21 runs in the entire match.

Lower down the overs, it was skipper Dinesh Karthik’s contribution of 29 runs from 27 balls helped the Knights to stretch the total close to 140.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar had the best bowling figure for SRH with 3/26 in his fours overs.

Despite a winning start, KKR lost two consecutive matches to come down to the fourth position in the IPL standings.

Winning all the three matches so far, SRH is leading the table with six points leaving behind MS Dhoni’s Chennai Super Kings and Ravichandran Ashwin-led Kings XI Punjab.

(Reporting by Souvik Ghosh)