Kolkata
Imran Tahir spun a web before Suresh Raina found his mojo back with a half-century as Chennai Super Kings inched closer towards another play off qualification with a five-wicket victory over Kolkata Knight Riders in an IPL match on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After Tahir\u2019s career-best 4 for 27 \nrestricted KKR to 161 for 8, CSK coasted to the target in 19.4 overs as \nRaina anchored the chase with an unbeaten 58 off 42 balls with seven \nfours and a sixRavindra Jadeja also played an important cameo hitting 31\n off 17 balls to pave the way for the team\u2019s seventh win in eight games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Needing\n 24 runs off the last two overs, Jadeja smashed Harry Gurney for three \nsuccessive fours to make it just a formality in the last over.This was \nthe defending champions\u2019 fourth win on the trot as they consolidated \ntheir position atop the table with 14 points and one more win will \nvirtually seal their spot in play-offs whose cut-off over the years has \nbeen 16 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was also their first win at the Eden Gardens\n since 2013 as they did a double on KKR who suffered a hat-trick of \ndefeats for the first time since 2014 and set to slip out of their \nsecond place in the table. Incidentally, 161 is their lowest score at \nthe Eden this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sunil Narine was the pick of KKR bowling \nwith figures of 2\/19 that included a wicket-maiden when he cleaned up \nFaf du Plessis (24) to end the powerplay.But Raina held on at the other \nend with significant partnerships including a 40-run stand with skipper \nMS Dhoni.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It all seemed a walk in the park for CSK when Narine \ngave the biggest breakthrough dismissing Dhoni for 16 with team\u2019s score \nof 121\/5, needing 41 runs from 26 balls.But Raina held his nerves while \nJadeja gave the finishing touches. On an Eden Gardens track where \nspinners had struggled so far, Tahir spun the match in favour of Chennai\n with his twin double blows in the 11th and 15th overs en route his \ncareer-best IPL figures that took him past Kagiso Rabada in the leading \nwicket-takers\u2019 tally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tahir\u2019s bowling had such devastating effect\n that KKR managed just 28 runs from last five overs and went on to lose \nthree more wickets to end up with a below-par total.But it was a \ndifferent script for KKR early on with a fit-again Lynn giving them a \nflying start en route to his second fifty this season that came off just\n 36 balls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having missed his team\u2019s last match because of flu, \nLynn went ballistic against Deepak Chahar who bled 22 runs from his \nfirst two overs with the Aussie smashing the seamer for 4-6-4 in the \nthird over.Such was Lynn\u2019s dominance that the otherwise explosive Sunil \nNarine looked like a spectator at the other end with the Aussie having a\n share of 31 off 33 runs in the first four overs.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KolkataImran Tahir spun a web before Suresh Raina found his mojo back with a half-century as Chennai Super Kings inched closer towards another play off qualification with a five-wicket victory over Kolkata Knight Riders in an IPL match on Sunday. After Tahir\u2019s career-best 4 for 27 restricted KKR to 161 for 8, CSK coasted to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59179"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59181,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59179\/revisions\/59181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}