Rajasthan Royals beat Kolkata Knight Riders by 6 wickets in the IPL 2021 match No. 18 at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.
They have now won two of their first five games.
RR captain Sanju Samson won the toss and had no hesitation in opting to bowl first.
It was a day when everything fell into place for the Royals, whose bowlers pegged back the Knights to a somewhat below-par total of 133 for nine after deciding to bowl.
Chris Morris finished with superb figures of 4 for 23 – his best figures in the IPL as none of the KKR batters got going.
A big disappointment for KKR is the poor form of Shubman Gill.
The highly talented 21-year-old has not been at his best this IPL scoring just 80 runs in 5 innings.
Gill was run out by a smart piece of fielding by Buttler for just 11.
The two West Indian batsmen continued to underperform, with Sunil Narine falling for 6 and Andre Russell, making just 9.
Equally worrisome are the poor performances of Dinesh Karthik (97 in 5 matches) and Eoin Morgan (45 in 5 matches).
Only Rahul Tripathi was amongst the runs with his 36-run innings.
Unadkat and Mustafizur Rehman bowled brilliantly, conceding 47 runs in their 8 overs and bagging 2 key wickets.
Chasing 134 for victory, RR skipper Sanju Samson remained unbeaten on 42 and he was well supported by David Miller as RR reached home in the 19th over.
RR brought in Yashaswi Jaiswal and Jaydev Unadkat and left out Shreyas Gopal and Manan Vohra.
KKR replaced Kamlesh Nagarkoti with Shivam Mavi.
However, it might be a good idea to bring in Lockie Ferguson for the next game as their top gun, Pat Cummins has not been firing.
Cummins has 4 wickets in 5 matches.
There were big expectations from Shakib al Hasan but he too hasn’t lived up to the hype, with 38 runs and 2 wickets in three matches.
Rajasthan Royals 134 for 4 (Samson 42*, Chakravarthy 2-32) beat Kolkata Knight Riders 133 for 9 (Tripathi 36, Morris 4-23) by six wickets
