Rajasthan Royals (RR) hosted Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium in Jaipur for the 15th match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2018. KKR had won two and lost two matches out of four matches, while RR had won 2 out of three matches played.
Dinesh Karthik won the toss and chose to field first. Both the teams went unchanged.
D’Arcy Short found it very hard to make runs against two spinners employed by Karthik. He crawled at the speed of a snail. Rahane, on the other hand, took Narine and other bowlers on and hit 36 off just 19 balls. He was stumped off Rana, as he looked to up the ante. Narine went for 48 runs off his 4 overs, the most expensive he has ever been in IPL.
Samson followed soon, as he was caught by Kuldeep off Mavi for 7. Rahul Tripathi hit 15 and Short was finally dismissed by Rana for 44 off 43 balls in a difficult innings. Jos Buttler hit 24 in 18 balls to take KKR to 160/8. Tom Curran (2/19) and N Rana (2/11) were the best bowlers from KKR.
Sunil Narine made up for his folly with the ball, but slamming 35 off 25 balls, as Chris Lynn registered his maiden duck in IPL, as he was bowled by Gowtham. Narine was run out and Uthappa looked good for his 48 off 36 balls with 6 fours and 2 sixes, before Gowtham got him too.
But Dinesh Karthik (42* off 23 balls) and Nitish Rana (35*) kept KKR ahead in the chase and finally won the match by 7 wickets.
BRIEF SCORES:
RR 160/8 (D SHORT 44; N RANA 2/11) lost to KKR 163/3 (R UTHAPPA 48; K GOWTHAM 2/23) by 7 wkts
