Agencies
New Delhi, April 20
Captain Gautam Gambhir's 49-ball 60 led Kolkata Knight Riders to a convincing six-wicket victory against Delhi Daredevils in their IPL encounter at the Feroz Shah Kotla on Monday.
Riding on Gambhir's knock, Kolkata chased down the 147-run target in 18.1 overs with Yusuf Pathan remaining unbeaten on 40, a knock that came off 26 balls and was studded with a huge six and six fours.
Kolkata were in a spot of bother when they lost Robin Uthappa (13) and Manish Pandey (0) in one over by Domnic Joseph.
Suryakumar Yadav hit 24 runs before getting dismissed by Nathan Coulter-Nile that brought Pathan to the crease, who added 65 runs for the fourth wicket with Gambhir.
It was a typical knock from Gambhir as he looked to steer mainly through the third-man region to keep the scorecard moving and amassed a fine fifty. The Kolkata captain found an able partner at the other end in Yadav, who muscled a few shots down the ground.
Yadav's eyes certainly lit up when JP Duminy introduced himself into the attack. He carted Delhi's captain down the ground for a six in the eighth over before perishing to Coulter-Nile.
Once Yadav was dismissed, Pathan clobbered the bowlers to all corners of the ground to take his team to victory.
Earlier, Kolkata bowlers led by pacers Morne Morkel and Umesh Yadav bowled a tight line to restrict Delhi to 146/8.
Put into bat, Delhi were hurt by lack of partnerships but a late flourish from Angelo Mathews (21-ball 28) helped the home side get some respect to their total as Morkel and Yadav picked two wickets apiece.
The South African pacer (2/30) drew first blood after getting Mayank Agarwal (1) caught at long leg with Umesh Yadav taking a sprawling catch.
Mystery spinner Sunil Narine then struck in his very first over, cleaning up skipper Jean-Paul Duminy (5), who was done in by an off-spinner that was pitched outside the leg-stump to the left-hander.
Young batsman Shreyas Iyer (31) then counter-attacked to stitch a 36-run partnership with Manoj Tiwary (32).
Just when it seemed the Mumbai-born player, who hit 3 fours and a six, is ready to take on the Kolkata bowlers, leg-spinner Piyush Chawla got the dangerman cleaned up in the ninth over.
Tiwary then joined hands with Yuvraj Singh (21) to not only rebuild the Delhi innings after the strategic time out but also improve the scoring-rate with a few hits to the fence.
But the Bengal player, whose 28-ball stay was laced with 5 fours, was scalped by Morkel after he mistimed a pull to short mid-wicket as the fourth wicket 37-run partnership came to an end.
Yuvraj's brief stay at the crease also came to an end in what looked like a funny stumping off Chawla after the left-hander had lost sight of the white ball while attempting a sweep and wicketkeeper Robin Uthappa was sharp to take the bails off only in the second attempt.
Kolkata bowlers continued to hurt the Delhi batting after Umesh Yadav got Kedar Jadhav (12) caught at backward point on the last ball of his third over.
But Mathews got stuck into Narine, hitting the off-spinner for two consecutive sixes and ended the 19th over with a boundary to get 20 runs of the West Indians' final over.
Nathan Coulter-Nile was run out in the final over of the innings and Mathews was caught behind off the final delivery with Yadav ending with impressive figures of 2/18.
Earlier, the two teams also observed two minutes silence in memory of young Bengal player Ankit Keshri, who died of a cardiac arrest three days after sustaining head injuries post a freak on-field collision during a CAB one-day game.
