In the 25th match of IPL 7 Rajasthan Royals defeated Kolkata Knight Riders yet again by 10 runs. The audience of Sardar Patel Stadium, Motera, Ahmedabad experienced almost everything that can happen in a match. Let’s start from the beginning, KKR won the toss and sent RR to bat first. Anyway, Ajinkya Rahane and Karun Nair opened the innings for RR. However, they started very well as Karun Nair scored 44 runs of 35 balls and Rahane scored 30 runs of 22 balls. After this good start Rahane was run out by the brilliant direct hit of Sunil Narine. Well, after that Sanju Samson (W) and Shane Watson (C) helped RR to put the score of 170 runs on the board. Samson and Watson scored 37 of 31 balls and 31 of 20 balls respectively. However, KKR boys took some fabulous catches in the match and Sunil Narine got the purple cap yet again as he took 2 wickets by just considering 28 runs. Vinay Kumar was very expensive yet useful against RR as he conceded 42 runs but took 2 very important wickets in the near end of the Rajasthan’s innings. Shakib Al Hasan also supported well as he took one wicket with the economy rate of 6.25.
However, KKR started their innings extremely well as Gautam Gambhir (C) (54 of 34 balls) got back some sort of his form and Robin Uthappa (W) (65 of 52 balls) batted well along with the KKR skipper. Uthappa and Gambhir made an outstanding opening partnership of 121 runs as well as KKR also got 121 runs on their board without losing any wicket. But everything after that went wrong for KKR as they lost 6 wickets very quickly by just scoring 2 runs. Shane Watson and Pravin Tambe turned the tide of the game as Tambe got an Outstanding Hat-trick and Watson took 3 wickets in an over. Shakib Al Hasan tried in the near end of the KKR’s innings but that was not enough for KKR as they lost 4th consecutive match in the tournament. However, Pravin Tambe (4-26-3) and Shane Watson (4-21-3) won the game for RR in an unbelievable turn around.
Pravin Tambe got the Man of the Match award for his remarkable match winning Hat-trick. Watson also performed well but Tambe’s Hat-trick sealed the match for Rajasthan Royals.