Trinidad and Tobago’s Sunil Narine bagged three for nine as his Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) recorded a four-wicket victory over Lahore Lions in their CLT20, Group A game in Hyderabad, yesterday.
Narine and the other spinners stifled the opposition before the KKR batsmen Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir overhauled the inadequate target.
Narine turned in another top performance that underlined his reputation as the best in the Twenty20 business, and 19-year-old ‘chinaman’ bowler Kuldeep Yadav supplemented Narine’s efforts to restrict the Lions.
The Lions started strongly with Ahmed Shehzad blasting shots down the ground, in the opening Powerplay, in pushing the score to 47 without loss, even as Narine bowled a maiden in the fifth over.
Narine’s West Indian teammate Andre Russell ended the opening stand in the seventh over when he broke the stumps before Nashir Jamsed (10) could ground his bat. The KKR’s spinners took charge in the middle overs, and Yadav had Mohammad Hafeez (9) when he holed out in the deep in a frustrating innings of attempted big hits.
When Shehzad found Uthappa at long-off in the 13th over to finish on a chancy 59, Lions’ top-heavy batting was in trouble, especially with three Narine overs to come. The lower-order batsmen erred when they faced Narine.
Saad Nasim missed his first ball and edged his second to short cover, Umar Siddiq lasted one more before being done in by the quicker one, and Asif Raza was bowled first ball. Narine nearly had a hat-trick but Wahab Riaz had his boot back in the crease before Bisla could break the stumps.
Umar Akmal pushed on in the dying stages to see his side over 150. But once Gautam Gambhir and Uthappa put on a century stand, KKR were on course for victory. They were coasting for the most part of the chase before a slew of wickets towards the end briefly made things dicey, only for Suryakumar Yadav to finish it off, scoring 14 from five balls faced.
Summarised Scores: Kolkata Knight Riders 153-6 (19.3 overs; Gambhir 60, Uthappa 46) vs Lahore Lions 151-7 (20 overs; Shehzad 59, Akmal 40, Narine 3-9). KKR won by four wickets.