Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore began their IPL journey by battling each other at the Eden Gardens on Sunday. Kolkata picked up a comfortable victory over the visitors after the RCB bowlers failed to capitalize on the big total set by their batsmen.

Winning the toss, Dinesh Karthik sent RCB to bat first. The Bangalore-based franchise scored 176 runs for 7 wickets with the help of four good innings from Brendon McCullum, Virat Kohli, AB de Villiers, and Mandeep Singh.

McCullum started aggressively and added 43 runs to the total before leaving the pitch. Following his departure, de Villiers carried on with the momentum and scored 44 off 23. Meanwhile, Kohli kept rotating the strike and made 37 runs before Nitish Rana took a brace by sending him and de Villiers back to the hut.

Mandeep clubbed 37 runs after facing 18 deliveries. He got dismissed by Vinay Kumar, the same bowler who also scalped the wicket of Chris Woakes. Sunil Narine, Mitchell Johnson, and Piyush Chawla also took one scalp apiece for KKR.

While chasing the seemingly big target, Chris Lynn returned to the pavilion scoring 5 runs and then Narine went all guns blazing against the RCB bowlers. He smashed a quick-fire fifty off just 19 balls before Umesh Yadav bowled him out.

Robin Uthappa also fell victim to the same bowler and left the crease on 13 runs. Then, a 55-run partnership from Nitish and his captain—Dinesh Karthik restored KKR’s innings.

Nitish was out scoring 34 runs as Washington Sundar trapped him lbw. Chris Woakes then struck twice to remove Rinku Singh and Andre Russell. However, Karthik remained unbeaten on 35 runs and steered his team to victory with 7 balls and 4 wickets remaining.

Royal Challengers Bangalore will face Kings XI Punjab on April 13 and Kolkata Knight Riders will take on Chennai Super Kings in their next encounter.

 

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