Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Delhi Capitals by 106 runs on Wednesday with to a blazing 85 from Sunil Narine, who also set a record for the second-best IPL total ever (272–7).
Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Delhi Capitals by 106 runs on Wednesday with to a blazing 85 from Sunil Narine, who also set a record for the second-best IPL total ever (272–7). A week prior to the enormous score, Sunrisers Hyderabad had achieved the highest-ever innings total of 277-3. After defeating Delhi for 166 runs in 17.2 overs to take the lead in the 10-team standings, Kolkata, the 2012 and 2014 IPL winners, have won three of their four games so far this season. The rest of the Delhi batting collapsed, although captain Rishabh Pant scored his second consecutive fifty, 55 from 25 balls, and Tristan Stubbs hit 54.
The venue was Delhi’s adopted home field owing to India’s forthcoming general elections, but Narine and Kolkata transformed it into their own.
Narine tore into the Delhi attack, hitting seven fours and seven sixes in 39 balls to record his greatest T20 score in his 501st outing.
Narine, 35, hammered Delhi seamer Ishant Sharma for 26 runs in an over, reaching his fifty in 21 balls and putting on 104 runs with teenage debutant Angkrish Raghuvanshi, who scored 54.
The bowlers received no respite as Narine’s dismissal off Mitchell Marsh in the 13th over brought in Andre Russell for another punishing knock.
Russell hammered 41 off 19 balls, and Rinku Singh’s eight-ball 26 threatened to push KKR past Hyderabad’s record.
South African fast Anrich Nortje dismissed Rinku at the end of the 19th over, and Ishant bowled Russell with a toe-crushing yorker at the start of the 20th, as Kolkata fell just short of the mark.
The innings contained 18 sixes and 22 fours.
Delhi were never in the chase after losing four wickets in five overs, including Marsh for a duck against fellow Australian Mitchell Starc.
It was Starc’s first wicket of the season, and he became the most expensive buy in IPL history when Kolkata paid $2.98 million for him in the auction.
Starc also struck David Warner for 18.
Pant and Stubbs added 93 runs for the fifth wicket before falling to Varun Chakravarthy, who got three wickets.
Medium-pacers and impact substitutes Vaibhav Arora took three wickets. Narine’s off-spin yielded statistics of 1-29.
