Mumbai butcher straightforward chase

News

Cricket365
May 16, 2012

Kolkata's decision to play three spinners paid dividends as they pulled off a surprising 32-run win over Mumbai at the Wankhede Stadium on Wednesday.

Having won the toss and restricted the Knight Riders to just 140, Mumbai would have thought that they had a fairly easy chase on their hands – and their initial approach suggested just that – but they were proved oh so wrong.

Herschelle Gibbs and Sachin Tendulkar were happy to play it safe in the early overs, seemingly with plenty of time to bring out the big shots without the run rate rising too much.

This proved a flawed plan though as Kolkata's spin trio of Iqbal Abdulla, Shakib Al Hasan and Sunil Narine ran riot.

Between the three of them, six wickets were claimed at a cost of just 59 runs.

Narine was not for the first time the star of the show, picking up four wickets for a miserly 15 runs.

For Mumbai, all members of the top five got into double figures, but nobody got passed 30, with Tendulkar's 27 the highest score produced as the batsmen wilted.

Earlier, Kolkata got off to a disastrous start as Brendon McCullum (1) fell to an incredibly poor lbw decision before Jacques Kallis saw his stumps disturbed by RP Singh with the next ball.

Manoj Tiwary's innings off 41 proved key for the visitors as his partnerships of 38 with Gautam Gambhir and 45 with Al Hasan paved some kind of platform.

Yusuf Pathan's 21 ensured that the target was defendable, but even on a wicket that was a tad slow, Mumbai will be wondering how they managed to lose this one.

The result takes Kolkata within a breath of qualification for the play-offs, while Mumbai have opened themselves up to the challenge of those further down the table.