Manan Vohra was in superb touch, making 51 off 33 balls and setting up
Kings XI's chase by putting on 97 with M. Vijay (53).
Vijay and Vohra set up the hosts’ comfortable victory over Pune Supergiants
Everything finally fell into place for Kings XI Punjab as the hosts got
their first points from their third game in the ninth season of the IPL
with a resounding six-wicket win over Rising Pune Supergiants here on
Sunday.
In a match that was expected to be a crunch game for both sides, only
one seemed to be playing to win. KXIP’s biggest strength, its foreign
recruits, came good when needed after the initial impetus from M. Vijay
and Manan Vohra set up the perfect platform for an easy win.
Batting is KXIP’s strength and, chasing a moderate target of 153, the
97-run opening partnership between Vijay and Vohra was a display of
control and dominance.
The duo dealt with pace and spin with equal ease, slamming boundaries at
will. Everything that RPS skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni threw at them
was punished.
Left-arm spinner Ankit Sharma, playing his first game, went for 13 runs
in his first over though he finally did get the breakthrough by
dismissing Vohra leg-before.
The fifth over saw Vohra slam Ishant Sharma for three consecutive fours,
on either side of the pitch around the field, each more powerful than
the previous one.
He repeated the feat with Thisara Perera in the 11th, this time
preferring to stick to the off side, and racing to his half century.
Vijay, at the other end, was happy trading in sixes before getting his
own 50.
Three wickets for M. Ashwin — the young leg-spinner is fast becoming
Dhoni’s go-to bowler for wickets — brought the visitors back into the
game.
Till the 15th over, the teams were level but unlike in the previous
matches, Glenn Maxwell stepped up to the plate and it paid off. He
swatted the RPS bowling to all corners, with 24 of his 32 runs coming in
fours and sixes, finishing off with a four through cover.
Earlier, RPS neither got the kind of start it was looking for nor did it accelerate the way it would have wanted in the middle.
Ajinkya Rahane went early, dragging an inside edge from Sandeep Sharma
on to his leg stump in the third over, but with the kind of line-up RPS
has, that should not have had an impact on the scoring rate.
But it did, and, barring a brief cameo by Steve Smith who scored a
26-ball 34, the RPS middle-order found no traction on a dry pitch.
It speaks a lot about RPS’s batting that not a single six was scored in 20 overs.
Faf du Plessis held one end up, getting boundaries at regular intervals,
but there was no back-up and, strangely enough, no urgency in the
team’s scoring. When it finally showed some — in the final over of the
innings — it lost three wickets for just three runs, du Plessis and
Dhoni perishing off successive balls going for the big hits.
Smith admitted later on that the team fell 20-25 runs short and that its bowling had not worked so far.
That would be an understatement and Dhoni would do well to rework his bowling options soon.
Score Board
Rising Pune Supergiants: Ajinkya Rahane b Sandeep 9 (9b, 2x4),
Faf du Plessis c & b Mohit 67 (53b, 8x4), Kevin Pietersen c Vohra b
Abbott 15 (15b, 2x4), Thisara Perera c Mohit b Sandeep 8 (9b, 1x4),
Steve Smith c Miller b Mohit 38 (26b, 5x4), M.S. Dhoni c Maxwell b Mohit
1 (2b), Irfan Pathan run out 2 (2b), R. Ashwin (not out) 1 (2b); Extras
(lb-8, w-3): 11; Total (for seven wickets in 20 overs): 152.
Fall of wickets: 1-10 (Rahane), 2-65 (Pietersen), 3-76 (Perera), 4-139 (Smith), 5-149 (du Plessis), 6-149 (Dhoni), 7-152 (Pathan).
Kings XI bowling: Sandeep Sharma 4-0-23-2, Kyle Abbott 4-0-38-1,
Axar Patel 3-0-26-0, Pardeep Sahu 4–0-31-0, Mohit Sharma 4-0-23-3, Glenn
Maxwell 1-0-3-0.
Kings XI Punjab: M. Vijay c Dhoni b M. Ashwin 53 (49b, 5x4, 2x6),
Manan Vohra lbw b Ankit Sharma 51 (33b, 7x4), Shaun Marsh b M. Ashwin 4
(6b), David Miller c Pietersen b M. Ashwin 7 (6b), Glenn Maxwell (not
out) 32 (14b, 3x4, 2x6), Wriddhiman Saha (not out) 4 (4b); Extras (w-2):
2; Total (for four wickets in 18.4 overs): 153.
Fall of wickets: 1-97 (Vohra), 2-103 (Marsh), 3-112 (Vijay), 4-119 (Miller).
Supergiants bowling: Ishant Sharma 3-0-26-0, Ankit Sharma
4-0-27-1, R. Ashwin 4-0-27-0, M. Ashwin 4-0-36-3, Irfan Pathan 1-0-7-0,
Thisara Perera 2.4-0-30-0.
Toss: Rising Pune Supergiants.
Man-of-the-match: Manan Vohra.
Kings XI won by six wickets with eight balls to spare.
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