Gayle takes the match away from Kolkata Knight Riders with his batting - The 5th match of the Indian Premier League saw Kolkata Knight Riders the defending champions once again in action. They hosted Royal Bangalore Challengers in their home grounds Eden Gardens in Kolkata. This was a tough challenge for the defending champions as Bangalore had the firepower to destroy any opposition with their batting order. After winning the toss Bangalore had no problems in deciding to field first.
Batting first the Kolkata Knight Riders got a good start from their openers Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir. They scored 81 runs for the team in 10 overs. It was a partnership which saw a lot of boundaries as well as a lot of missed catches. Uthappa after scoring 35 runs in 28 balls lost his wicket. Gautam and Manish Pandey took the team to 103. In the 14th over Gambhir after scoring 58 runs lost his wicket. This was the breakthrough that the visiting team was looking for as they went in deep to take more quick wickets. Suddenly KKR were struggling at 131/4 in 17th over. The run scoring was silent for a great period of time but then came the storm named Andre Russell. He scored 41 runs in 17 balls to take his team to a total of 177 in the end of 20 overs.
A target of 178 was a tough one in the slow Eden Gardens wicket and the visitors needed a good start. This was a dream for the team as KKR bowlers disrupted the start. Virat Kohli, Dinesh Karthik and Mandeep Singh lost their wicket pretty cheaply. The team was struggling at 56/3. Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers came together and took the team to a score of 93 where de Villiers lost his wicket in the 11th over. He scored 28 runs in 13 balls before losing the wicket. RCB lost more wickets and were soon restricted to 133/6 in 17th over when Chris Gayle turned the game around. He alone kept hitting the balls out of the boundary to score 96 runs in 56 balls before getting out. He took the team to the verge of winning before losing his wicket. At the end RCB won the game with 1 over in hand, at the end it was bad fielding that gave Gayle the chance of surviving and hence they ended up at the losing side.
Chris Gayle was named as the man of the match as well as he won the Yes Bank maximum sixes award. Manish Pandey got the HotStar most entertaining player award for his superb fielding.