KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS SHOWN DOMINANCE IN HOME AGAINST KINGS XI PUNJAB

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Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) beat Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) by 8 wickets in their Indian Premier League encounter. The skipper Gautam Gambhir scored his 33rd half-century in IPL and Umesh Yadav picked up four wickets in his return and restricted Kings XI Punjab to 170/9 in 20 overs.

The star of the match was Sunil Narine as the windie just give 19 runs in his 4 overs, also pick up 1 wicket and scored a quick fire 37 runs in 19 balls. 

Sunil Narine claimed the Man of the Match

Sunil Narine : It came off today. Sometimes it does not, but today it did. I opened there (BBL) and they (team management) wanted to try. It (the wicket) is completely different. Just need to do the basics right, keep it wicket-to-wicket and not give the batsmen any space.

Gambhir: It doesn’t really matter if I have the orange cap or not. What matters is where we are in the points table. It is a beautiful wicket to bat on; had good pace and carry. We have some quality fast bowlers and with Umesh coming back, it makes my job easier. I need to start trusting him (Narine) with the bat now. He’s the leader of the attack with the kind of quality he has. We discussed and wanted someone to go hard and there was no point keeping Sunil back at number nine. We have a long batting line up and we could afford someone to go hard at the top. Personal runs do not make me happy. We have a game coming up in a day’s time and we have to take the momentum going forward.

Maxwell: I thought we had a chance with how the wicket played and with an extra quick in our line-up. I have seen it in the Big Bash (Narine opening the innings). He played and missed a few times before scoring some handy runs. We actually played pretty well, there was one poor over where we lost three wickets. Apart from that we were good with the bat. We have to regroup quickly and focus on the Delhi game