Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) ended their four-match losing streak in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023 by defeating Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) by 21 runs in a high-scoring match at M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Wednesday.
KKR's spinners Varun Chakaravarthy and Suyash Sharma collectively took five wickets while Andre Russell picked two wickets to restrict RCB to 179/8, despite captain Virat Kohli's 54 and Mahipal Lomror's impressive 18-ball 34.
Earlier, KKR set a target of 201 with an aggressive 56 from Jason Roy, a quick 48 from captain Nitish Rana, and unbeaten cameos from Rinku Singh and David Wiese.
Chasing the mammoth target, Kohli and Faf du Plessis started strong by taking boundaries off Vaibhav Arora in the opening over. Kohli continued to hit boundaries off Suyash and Chakaravarthy, but Suyash struck by trapping Shahbaz Ahmad lbw. In the last over of power-play, KKR struck again when Glenn Maxwell hit a slower delivery from Chakravarthy straight to mid-off.
Lomror broke a sedate period for RCB by sweeping fiercely off Nitish Rana for four, followed by muscling a brace of sixes through the leg-side off Sunil Narine. Kohli got a boundary on a thick outside edge off Suyash and took off for a brace on the very next ball to reach his fifty in 33 balls.
Lomror pulled Chakaravarthy for a six over deep mid-wicket, but the spinner bounced back as the left-handed batter holed out to the same region. KKR further silenced the Chinnaswamy crowd in the 13th over when Kohli pulled off Russell, only for Venkatesh Prasad to dive to his left and take a stunning low catch.
Though Dinesh Karthik and Suyash Prabhudessai hit a boundary each, the latter being slow in taking the second run resulted in his run-out at the non-striker's end. KKR ended RCB's last hope for a victory by having Wanindu Hasaranga and Karthik caught in the deep in successive overs, making the result a foregone conclusion.
Brief Scores: Kolkata Knight Riders 200/5 in 20 overs (Jason Roy 56, Nitish Rana 48; Wanindu Hasaranga 2/24, Vyshak Vijaykumar 2/41) beat Royal Challengers Bangalore (Virat Kohli 54, Mahipal Lomror 34; Varun Chakravarthy 3/27, Andre Russell 2/29) by 21 runs.