DOT Desk: Spinners Varun Chakaravarthy and Sunil Narine combined to peg back CSK at regular intervals, preventing them from scoring in the middle overs before Nitish and Rinku stitched a 99-run partnership to set up KKR’s victory, reports TBS.
Nitish and Andre Russell knocked off the winning runs with nine balls to spare. KKR didn’t begin the chase very convincingly, their top-order batters finding ways to get out. Rahmanullah Gurbaz chased a wide half volley from Deepak Chahar to find Tushar Deshpande at deep point. Venkatesh Iyer — who had hit Chahar for two boundaries in four balls — was then cramped for a backfoot cut that went straight to Ravindra Jadeja at short third man.
That Chahar was bowling to a plan was clear when Jason Roy chased a wide slower ball that he dug out to Matheesha Pathirana at short third man to reduce KKR to 33/3. But Nitish and Rinku got together to calmly knock off the runs by trusting their off-side game.Restricting CSK to their lowest score this IPL on a tacky pitch where the ball didn’t come through easily was job half done though. As long as openers Ruturaj Gaikwad and Devon Conway were batting, CSK were going at almost 10 per over.