Kolkata beat Hyderabad to stay in Playoffs contention

A superb all-round bowling effort, following a well-paced innings by Shubman Gill helped Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) to a much-needed six-wicket triumph against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Sunday night in Dubai. Kolkata remained in contention for a Playoffs berth, while Hyderabad are now guaranteed of the last place.

Kolkata restricted SRH to 115/8 on a sluggish surface, and rode on Gill's 57, in 51 balls, to chase the total down with two balls to spare.

Defending the small total, the SRH bowlers put up a great fight, making the KKR batters work for their runs. In fact, at one point, the asking rate was above 7 an over. 

After losing Venkatesh Iyer (8) and Rahul Tripathi (7) cheaply, Kolkata were struggled to slow down in the middle overs. The in-form Nitish Rana played a few dot balls before he got going. After 10 overs, KKR were tottering at 44/2. 

With Rana struggling, Gill took the onus on himself to break the shackles. He smacking Jason Holder for two fours in the 12th over to bring down the equation to 53 off 42 balls. He continued to attack, and struck debutant Umran Malik for back-to-back fours in the next over to ease out the chase to bring up his first half century of the season.

Gill eventually fell to Siddarth Kaul. In the next over Holder claimed Rana. From there, the experienced pair of Dinesh Karthik (18*) and Eoin Morgan (2*) closed down without much fuss.

Earlier, Kane Williamson chose to bat, but SRH lost Wriddhiman Saha for a duck in the second ball, leg-before to Tim Southee. Jason Roy (10) went next, caught by Southee off Shivam Mavi in the fourth over. Williamson (26 in 21 balls) tried to resurrect the innings, and looked good before being run out by Shakib Al Hasan, leaving SRH at 38/3 in 6.5 overs. 

They never recovered.

There some useful contributions down the order from Priyam Garg (21) and Abdul Samad (25), but the innings never got any momentum.

The spin duo of Shakib (1-20) and Sunil Narine (4-0-12-0) was brilliant in the middle overs as SRH batsmen found the going tough. Southee (2-26), Mavi (2-29) and Varun Chakravarthy (2-26) shared six wickets among them.

Brief scores: Sunrisers Hyderabad 115/8 in 20 overs (Williamson 26; Chakravarthy 2-26, Southee 2-26) lost to Kolkata Knight Riders 119/4 in 19.4 overs (Gill 57; Holder 2-32) by 6 wickets with 2 balls to spare. Player of the Match: Shubman Gill.