Kolkata secure much-needed victory

Kolkata Knight Riders 183 for 5 (Tiwary 75*, Ganguly 50) beat Kings XI Punjab144 for 6 (Sangakkara 30) by 39 runs

Sourav Ganguly hit a composed half-century and Manoj Tiwary exploded after a slow start to boost Kolkata Knight Riders to 183, a total beyond the reach of a listless Kings XI Punjab. It was a mediocre game, especially from Punjab, who were so painfully slow that they fell out of the reckoning very early in the chase.

It made for strange viewing that no one took ownership of the chase as the game kept slipping away from Punjab. Yuvraj Singh and Manvinder Bisla hit a few boundaries early on in the piece but both fell to Ajit Agarkar - Manoj Tiwary held on to a splendid running catch at deep midwicket to remove Yuvraj - and the chase started to derail. What baffled was the approach of Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, who allowed the pressure to mount. They didn't go for any big shots and left themselves with too much to do in the end. With the run-rate mounting at an exponential rate, both fell while going for high-risk shots: Jayawardene moved outside off stump and couldn't connect with the paddle shot, and Sangakkara was stumped as he lost balance while going for a reverse slog. Game over.

The victory, though, was set up by Kolkata's batting, led by Ganguly and Tiwary. It was an interesting innings: just when the visitors were letting things slip, they would attack. Their batting graph resembled a sine curve: Kolkata attacked at the top before they suddenly lost steam and meandered for a while, but they picked up the momentum after the first time-out. They slowed down once again towards the end but Tiwary looted 21 runs in the final over, bowled by Irfan Pathan, to regain lost ground.