Thrilling Eden Gardens Game as Rinku Singh Leads KKR to Tough Victory

KKR pulled off an incredible turnaround in the second leg of the Indian Premier League season at Eden Gardens, defeating the visiting Rajasthan Royals by four wickets. KKR chased down a target of 156 runs in spite of a disastrous start, managing to score the required runs on the last ball of the innings. The turning point of the match came when Rinku Singh displayed nerves of steel and the bowlers delivered a controlled display of their skills.

Spin Choke and Middle Order Collapse

Rajasthan Royals seemed to be comfortably placed right from the beginning, thanks to an excellent opening stand of 81 runs scored by the youngster Vaibhav Sooryavanshi (46) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (39). Things changed completely when the spinners of KKR came into play. 

Varun Chakravarthy was the standout performer among the KKR bowlers, taking impressive figures of 3/14 and registering the 200 wicket-mark in T20Is. In addition to the economy run show of Sunil Narine, along with Kartik Tyagi’s 3/22.  KKR reduced the middle-order batsmen of RR to mere shadows. What was looking like a strong score, RR fell victim to spin and posted 155/9, which was short by 15-20 runs.

Heroics from Rinku & The Great Recovery

As always, the chasing began in ominous fashion for the home side with both the opening batsmen getting dismissed for a duck – one of them being the skipper himself, Ajinkya Rahane. Things were going smoothly at 37/3 and then worsened further to 70/5 when RR’s bowlers – under the leadership of Ravindra Jadeja and Jofra Archer -upped the ante. 

But once again, it was Rinku Singh who justified his reputation as one of the best finishers in the IPL as he played an assured knock of 53 runs off just 34 deliveries. And the perfect foil to Rinku’s innings came in Anukul Roy, whose explosive cameo of 29 off just 16 deliveries’ helped KKR snatch a crucial victory from the jaws of defeat.