(CMC) – Retired West Indies mystery spinner Sunil Narine was at the heart of exhilarating batting that set up the Kolkata Knight Riders for a 106-run win against the Delhi Capitals in the Indian Premier League yesterday.
The 35-year-old Trinidadian cracked seven fours and seven sixes in 85 from 39 balls and led KKR to the second highest team total in the history of the Twenty20 tournament of 272 for seven after they decided to bat at the Reddy Stadium.
Narine followed up with a tidy spell of one for 29 from his allotted four overs to make him a shoo-in for the Player-of-the-Match award, but pacer Vaibhav Arora and leg-spinner Varun Chakravarthy shared six wickets, and the Capitals were dismissed for 166 in 17.2 overs in reply.
The win was the third in their three matches for KKR and pushed them to the top of the 10-team table with six points—the same record for the Rajasthan Royals—but their big hitting gave them a superior net run rate of 2.518, while the Capitals are now ninth on two points with one win from three matches.
“Cricket is all about batting, so I am looking to contribute more as a batter,” Narine said. “But I still enjoy bowling… At the end of the day, it is what the team needs. If they need me to bat, I will bat. On a [pitch] like that, we wanted to win by a bigger margin, so it helps [with net run rate] later on in the tournament.”
Narine, who bats left-handed, needed six balls to get off the mark with a gentle single to the third man in the second over before he unleashed an array of strokes that powered the KKR batting and left the Capitals shell-shocked.
The Capitals missed out on a chance to end his innings early when he was caught behind off Ishant on 26, but the fielding team asked for the review after the stipulated time.
KKR were 88 for one at the end of the Power Play, and Angkrish Raghuvanshi, batting for the first time in an IPL match, was undaunted on the big stage and shared 104 for the second wicket with Narine, who surpassed his previous best IPL and T20 career scores.
Australia all-rounder Mitchell Marsh got Narine caught behind in the 13th over, and Nortje got Raghuvanshi caught at third man for 54 off 27 balls that included five fours and three sixes in a confident start for the youngster.
West Indies all-rounder Andre Russell blitzed 41 off 19 balls that included four fours and three sixes, put on 56 for the fourth wicket with India batsman Shreyas Iyer, and led the late charge in the closing over before he was dismissed in the final over.
The Capitals had a shaky start to the chase when they slumped to 51 for four at the end of the Power Play after Arora and Australian left-arm pacer Mitchell Starc carved up their top-order batting.
India wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant continued his comeback from a death-defying traffic collision with 55 off 25 balls, and South African batsman Tristan Stubbs further proved his worth with 54 off 32 balls.
They scripted a fighting partnership of 93 for the fifth wicket that carried the Capitals past 100, but the asking rate continued to grow in between the big hits from the pair.
The dismissal of Stubbs in the 15th over triggered a collapse in which the Capitals lost their last four wickets for seven in the span of 16 balls.
