Young Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) batsman Shubman Gill on Saturday played an unbeaten innings of 70 runs to help his team in registering their first win of the ongoing season of the Indian Premier League in the UAE.
Chasing 143, KKR rode on the 92-run partnership between Gill and Eoin Morgan (42 not out) to beat Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi.
After losing opener Sunil Narine for a duck in the second over, KKR had gained some momentum with the quickfire 13-ball knocks of 26 runs from Nitish Rana. But the left-batsman departed in the fifth over to put KKR at 43/2.
KKR skipper Dinesh Karthik followed Rana and continued on his disastrous form with the bat as be got out in the seventh over. His team were lurking at 53/3 when Gill and and Morgan steadied the ship.
In their partnership, Gill hit five fours and two sixes while Morgan hit three fours and two sixes.
Earlier, SRH won the toss and chose to bat — the first time any team has done that this season. Manish Pandey top scored with 51 off 38 balls as SRH scraped their way to 142/4 in 20 overs.
Captain David Warner got to spend more time in the middle than he did in the previous match in which he faced just six balls before being dismissed. On Saturday, he scored 36 off 30 balls but fell to spinner Varun Chakravarthy just as he was looking to shift gears.
KKR’s record buy Pat Cummins followed up his underwhelming show in the first match with a masterful performance on Saturday, returning miserly figures of 1/19 in four overs.
Brief scores: SRH 142/4 in 20 overs (Manish Pandey 51, David Warner 36; Andre Russell 1/16, Pat Cummins 1/19) lost to KKR 145/3 (Shubman Gill 70 not out, Eoin Morgan 42 not out; Rashid Khan 1/25, T Natarajan 1/27) by seven wickets
With IANS inputs