At Eden, Piyush Chawla four-for derails Daredevils

Gautam Gambhir was halfway down the pitch and JP Duminy had all three stumps to aim at. In fact, the Delhi Daredevils captain had enough time to run in and disturb the timber. He chose to throw instead and missed the target. It was the second over of the match after Kolkata Knight Riders won the toss on a very slow Eden Gardens pitch. One over later, Duminy beat Robin Uthappa in the air and the mishit went high towards long-on. Manoj Tiwary failed to hold onto the ball, which went for a six. Uthappa should have been out on 15. Uthappa received another life on 23, with Yuvraj Singh dropping him at short mid-wicket.

In between, Zaheer Khan had Gambhir out caught behind off a lovely out-swinger.

However, Zaheer’s first spell was an aberration in an otherwise stale performance in the field, where Delhi’s efforts bordered on the comical. They dropped catches and allowed the singles to be converted into twos.

Botha the blaster

Delhi, however, pulled it back in the middle overs when Amit Mishra was bowling economically. Yuvraj, too, did a decent job with 1/14 in two overs. Imran Tahir took two wickets but bowled many boundary balls. With run rate hovering around a shade over seven, Piyush Chawla was sent in at No.4 with the licence to kill. A falling-over pull to the square-leg boundary to a Mathews bouncer induced collective laughter from everyone present at the stadium. Manish Pandey, however, got out in the next over, chopping a Yuvraj delivery on to the stumps. Chawla followed suit, caught at long-on by Saurabh Tiwary off Morkel. Andre Russell didn’t last long, beautifully taken by Mathews off Imran Tahir. 143/5 after 18 overs and the visitors had made considerable recovery from their early sloppiness. But Johan Botha carted Zaheer for four consecutive boundaries in the final over to take the score to 171/7. Delhi’s recovery turned out to be a false dawn.

Leggie who got it right

Sunil Narine, back after his action was cleared again, gave away 18 runs in his last two overs and 30 overall. But another spinner was to have a good day. At 54 for no loss after nine, Delhi had a decent start, but they were way behind the asking rate. Also, Kolkata were in the process of spinning a web.  Tiwary crawled before throwing away his wicket, hitting Piyush Chawla straight to Surya Yadav at long-on. Iyer was fooled by a Brad Hogg top-spinner, playing it on to the off stump. Delhi went into the second strategic time-out on 95/2. Chawla then dismissed Kedar Jadhav and Yuvraj Singh inside three balls. The leggie then got rid of Duminy to bag a four-for.

Brief scores: KKR 171/7 in 20 overs (Y Pathan 42, R Uthappa 32; I Tahir 2/46) bt DD 158/6 in 20 overs  (S Iyer 40, JP Duminy 25, M Tiwary 25, S Tiwary 24 n.o; P Chawla 4/32)