Teenager Riyan Parag led a dramatic late fightback along with Jofra Archer as Rajasthan Royals recovered from a batting slump to snatch a thrilling three-wicket win over Kolkata Knight Riders in a dramatic IPL match on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 17-year-old Parag from Assam played without any \nfear in only his 14th T20 match to score a 31-ball 47 in a determined \nrearguard innings as the Royals chased down the target of 176 with four \nballs to spare. Parag, who hit five fours and two sixes, added 44 \ncrucial runs with Archer who remained not out on 27 off just 12 balls \nwith the help of two fours and two sixes — for the seventh wicket from \n3.3 overs to turn the match on its head after the Royals were reduced to\n 98 for 5 in the 13th over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Royals needed 54 runs from the \nfinal five overs with just four lower order batsmen to come and the \nmatch was definitely for KKR’s taking at that stage but the script \nchanged altogether as the home side slumped to their sixth loss on the \ntrot.Archer, who was playing his last IPL match of the season as he is \nleaving for England, hit a six to win the match as the Royals reached \n177 for 7 in 19.2 overs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the win, the Royals moved up one \nplace to seventh with eight points from 11 matches, the same as KKR, who\n remained at sixth spot, from the same number of matches. Three teams \nKKR, the Royals and Royal Challengers Bangalore now occupy the last \nthree spots in the table with eight point each from 11 matches and all \nof them still have a theoretical chance of making it to the play-offs, \nprovided they do not lose any of their remaining three matches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\n Royals made a flying start with openers Sanju Samson (22) and Ajinkya \nRahane (34) scoring 53 off the first five overs but a sudden batting \ncollapse saw then being reduced to 63 for 3 in the eighth over, losing \nthree wickets in two overs for just 10 runs.Spinners Sunil Narine and \nPiyush Chawla threaten to change the complexion of the game with a burst\n of two wicket apiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Narine had Rahane LBW in the sixth over \nwith a gem of delivery which turned a bit from the middle before Chawla \ngot the wicket of Samson the next over with the googly finding the \ntimber through the gate. Captain Steve Smith (2) was out in the eighth \nover with Narine getting him.The Royals were looking down the barrel \nwith the match drifting towards KKR before Parag and Archer enacted a \nmemorable run chase and a win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Earlier, under-fire skipper Dinesh\n Karthik silenced his critics with a career-best 97 not out as Kolkata \nKnight Riders recovered from an atrocious start to post a competitive \n175 for six against Rajasthan Royals in their must-win IPL fixture \nThursday.Under pressure to perform after a string of five straight \ndefeats, the World Cup-bound Karthik promoted himself to No. 4, \nshrugging off criticism, and smashed nine sixes and seven fours in his \n50-ball unbeaten knock, as KKR hit top gear in the back end of the \ninnings, scoring 126 from the last 10 overs and 75 off the last five \novers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On a day their impact player Andre Russell looked \nlacklustre in his run-a-ball 14, in which he was dropped twice, it was a\n one-man show from Karthik who went berserk against the likes of Jaydev \nUnadkat and Shreyas Gopal.Karthik seized the momentum in the 11th over \nwhen he hit Shreyas Gopal for a six followed by three boundaries in an \nover that yielded 25 runs and KKR did not look back since then. Karthik \ncompleted his fifty from 35 balls and smashed Jofra Archer for \nsuccessive sixes in the penultimate over before bettering his previous \nbest of 86 when he went berserk against Unadkat by hitting him for two \nsixes and one four in the final over. Unadkat conceded 50 runs for his \none wicket and was the most expensive of the lot as he undid all the \ngood work done by Varun Aaron (2\/20) who had a fine new ball spell of \n3-1-10-2.\n\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Teenager Riyan Parag led a dramatic late fightback along with Jofra Archer as Rajasthan Royals recovered from a batting slump to snatch a thrilling three-wicket win over Kolkata Knight Riders in a dramatic IPL match on Thursday. The 17-year-old Parag from Assam played without any fear in only his 14th T20 match to score a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60032,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60031","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\/60031","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=60031"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60033,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60031\/revisions\/60033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}