The first official game of IPL 2014 has kicked off tonight at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi. The game was played between Kolkata Knight Riders and the defending champions Mumbai Indians.
Kolkata Knight Rider won the toss and elected to bat first in the first match of IPL 7. The four overseas players of KKR were Sunil Narine, Jacques Kallis, Morne Morkel and Shakib Al Hasan. Michael Hussey, Kieron Pollard, Corey Anderson and Lasith Malinga were the four overseas players for Mumbai Indians.
Kolkata Knight Riders skipper Gautam Gambhir was not able to add any runs to his tally as he didn’t have the answer to the Malinga’s fine bowling. It was a perfect start for Mumbai Indians in IPL 2014. But the new addition to the KKR squad, Manish Pandey played very well, and scored 64 runs of 53 balls. And the veteran lad Jacques Kallis again proved his importance by scoring 72 runs of 46 balls.
However, Malinga gave a great performance by taking 4 wickets in his 4 overs by just giving 23 runs. The uncapped player for KKR, Suryakumar Yadav finished it well for KKR as he smashed 3 fours in the last over and KKR managed to score a decent 163 runs losing 5 wickets in their limited 20 overs.
Mumbai Indians suffered a heavy defeat of 41 runs as KKR bowlers performed very well. MI managed to score only 122 runs while losing 7 wickets in their 20 overs. Mumbai's mega catches for this IPL season like Corey Anderson and Michael Hussey failed to deliver performances of their class.
The mighty spinner Sunil Narine was able to meet his expectation once again. He took 4
wickets while conceding 20 runs in his quota of 4 overs and other bowlers of KKR supported him very well. Morne Morkel 16/1 in 4 overs, Shakib Al Hasan 29/1 in 4 overs, Piyush Chawla 15/1 in 3 overs. Jacques Kallis got Yes Bank
Maximum sixes award.
Sunil Narine became the quickest bowler to pick up 50 wickets in the IPL, the Man of the Match award was given to Jacques Kallis for playing the
match winning innings for KKR.