Chahal steals the show with four wickets as RR restrict hosts KKR to 149-8

Yuzvendra Chahal celebrates a KKR wicket yesterday. Pic/PTI

Yuzvendra Chahal became the highest wicket-taker in IPL history (187 wickets) as Rajasthan Royals restricted Kolkata Knight Riders to a vulnerable 149-8 at the Eden Gardens here on Thursday. The veteran leg-spinner sucked the fight out of the Knights with four wickets for 25 as Nitish Rana & Co tried to recover from early blows. Among his scalps were those of Venkatesh Iyer and Nitish, who had stitched together 48 off 38 balls for the third wicket.

Sometimes, all it needs is a flash of brilliance to set the course of a match. For RR, it came early, in the third over of the KKR innings when a sprinting Shimron Hetmyer leaped and plucked the ball out of thin air and then didn't put a foot wrong as the momentum took him running inches from the boundary cushion. What had looked like a sure six, ended up with the wicket of an in-form Jason Roy. At the time of going to press, RR were 78-1 in 6 overs. Earlier, Venkatesh made a 42-ball 57 with four sixes and two boundaries and Nitish a 17-ball 22 but they proved the only notes of resistance as the Knights never quite recovered with RR finding the spark to push the issue.

Also Read: Royals skipper Sanju Samson rues no-ball in finnal over, hails SRH batters

In the buoyant afterglow of Roy's wicket, RR fielders threw themselves around to stop the runs and take the catches. Sandeep Sharma dived to gobble up an uppish drive from Rahmanullah Gurbaz and give Boult his second wicket. The stage was nicely set for Ravichandran Ashwin to come in, and he conceded just two in his first over. At the end of the Powerplay, the scoreboard read a pathetic 37 for two. Joe Root squeezed in a couple of overs and Chahal came in late but left with a handful of wickets. In his very first over, he sent back Nitish with Hetmyer diving forward in the deep to complete another catch. Russell promised and left, and so did the reliable Rinku Singh who was forced into taking additional risk to bolster the sagging run-rate on a wicket that lent itself nicely to the slow bowlers.

187
Total number of wickets claimed by Yuzvendra Chahal in 143 IPL matches, the most by any bowler

Brief scores
KKR 149-8 in 20 overs (V Iyer 57; Y Chahal 4-25, T Boult 2-15) v RR (scores incomplete)