Kolkata Knight Riders won the qualifier 1 at their home ground quite easily against Kings XI Punjab by 28 runs to be in the final of IPL 2014. Earlier in the game KXIP won the toss and elected to field first. As usual Robin Uthappa (W) and Gautam Gambhir (C) opened the innings for KKR but double G failed to give any decent innings as he went back to the pavilion by just scoring 1 run.
The man in excellent form Robin Uthappa (W) (42 of 30 balls) yet again gave a decent start to KKR, he scored 40+ runs for the 10th consecutive time in IPL 7 and that’s an incredible record indeed. Well after that any of the batsman didn’t bat too well or too bad as Manish Pandey, Shakib Al Hasan, Yusuf Pathan, Ryan ten Doeschate and Suryakumar Yadav they all scored 15+ runs with a conforming strike rate.
Piyush Chawla (17 runs of 9 balls) gave a all round performance as he scored some quick runs in the back end of the first innings to put up a fighting total of 163 runs on their board in slow turning pitch.
However, Akshar Patel done a fabulous job for KXIP as he claimed 2 wickets by just considering 11 runs in 4 overs. Mitchell Johnson and Karanveer Singh also supported him well by claiming 2 and 3 wickets respectively.
Extraordinary batting line up of KXIP completely collapsed in front of KKR bowling attack, only Manan Vohra (26 runs of 19 balls), Wriddhiman Saha (W) (35 runs of 31 balls) and George Bailey (C) (26 runs of 17 balls) played a modest innings for KXIP. Glenn Maxwell couldn’t delever the performance as he was expected to, it’s the third time that he failed to play any assaulting innings against KKR as he played against other team in IPL 7.
Eden Gardens saw a complete bowling enforcement from KKR as they restricted Punjab to only 135 runs in their allotted 20 overs. Umesh Yadav bowled an out of the ordinary spell to make the match more easy for KKR as he took 3 wickets and conceded 13 runs only in his 4 overs. Morne Morkel also claimed 2 wickets in the beginning of the second innings to crack up the top order of KXIP. Piyush Chawla and Shakib Al Hasan shared the other two wickets equally.
Umesh Yadav got the Man of the Match award for his amazing bowling display.