New Delhi: Kolkata Knight Riders have kept their chances alive of being qualifying to the play-offs after comfortably defeating the table toppers Kings XI Punjab by 9 wickets in 34th IPL game on Sunday. Kolkata batsmen who was struggling earlier in the tournament seems to get back in their form since they played Rajasthan Royals second time. The openers are set; Gautam Gambhir and Robin Uthappa are providing the base which KKR needed and the bowlers are doing their job from the beginning. The win against Kings XI will certainly boost their confidence.Let's take a look, how the Knight breached into Punjab's winning streakIt was the must win game for KKR as they needed to win that to be alive in the tournament. Kings XI were put into bat first by the Kolkata skipper Gautam Gambhir but it was not the good start that he wanted. Jacques Kallis conceded 17 runs in the first over to Sehwag who struck four boundaries in that over. However, Morne Morkel gave the first breakthrough when Mandeep Singh was caught behind early in the second over. But Kings XI continued to score runs at the run rate of above 8.Kings XI were looking good but not after when Morkel got his second wicket on the first ball of 6th over. Saha who was batting well was bowled out at the score of 15 by an inside edge.The next batsman in was Glenn Maxwell aka Maxi who joined Sehwag on the crease. These two tried to rebuild the innings till Maxwell departed in the 11th over. He tried to slog sweep Chawla's uppish delivery and was caught by Morkel at deep square leg boundary. He scored 14 off 14 balls and it was certainly not a Maxwell's Day.After Maxwell, in comes the next big hitter David Miller. The Kings XI continued scoring at the rate of 8 runs per over but in the 15th over KKR got their major breakthrough by dismissing Virender Sehwag on 72. He tried to slog sweep but got the inside edge and bowled out by Piyush Chawla.That was probably the turning point of the match for Kings XI Punjab as they were looking towards to set a daunting total again.Just in the next over, Umesh Yadav got Miller's middle stump out of the ground in an offcutter delivery. He scored 13 and Kings XI were now 120/5. The “M” factor for Punjab failed!Piyush Chawla struck his third wicket by dismissing Rishi Dhawan at the score of 4 in the last ball ball of 17th over. He finished with bowling figures of 4-0-19-3.Now, Mitchell Johnson and skipper George Bailey were on the crease. After Johnson scored two back to back boundaries off Narine's two deliveries, he tried to hit the big one again but was stumped by Uthappa as he was way ahead of the crease. Akshar Patel was run out in the last ball of the innings as they tried to get two runs. As Sehwag was batting, it was like that the target would be somewhere around 180 but KKR bowlers restricted Kings XI Punjab to 149/8 in 20 overs and the target of 150 was not looking so difficult for in-form KKR openers. So far in the tournament, KKR is the only team to have restricted Kings XI under 150 in the both the matches they played.Now, it was the time for KKR to begin their chase. The openers Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir gave yet another solid start; scoring 55 runs in the first six powerplay overs.However Uthappa was caught at deep mid wicket by Akshar Patel when he was batting well at the score of 46 off 27 deliveries. Parvinder Awana manages to get the only wicket for Kings XI at the KKR's score of 68.Later Manish Pandey and Gautam Gambhir built a solid 82 runs partnership and took KKR to their fourth victory in the tournament with 12 balls to spare. Gambhir scored his third consecutive half century (63 off 45 balls) and Pandey finished after scoring 36 off 35 balls. He started the tournament with a hat-trick of ducks and now has completed a hat-trick of half-centuries. He now has 23 half-centuries across seven IPL editions maximum by any player till date. Credit should also be given to leg-spinner Piyush Chawla (3/19) for his brilliant bowling in the middle overs. It was a one sided game from when KKR started their chase and this win certainly brings them back in the tournament. In 9 matches, KKR now have 8 points and move upto the fourth position in the points table.
