Punjab Kings (PBKS) are locking horns with Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) on Saturday (April 1) at the Punjab Cricket Association Stadium in Mohali. On the back of Bhanuka Rajapaksa‘s 50, Shikhar Dhawan‘s 40, and Sam Curran‘s 26, Punjab Kings posted a mammoth total of 191/5.
KKR skipper Nitish Rana won the toss and decided to field first. PBKS openers Prabhsimran Singh and Shikhar Dhawan gave a brilliant start to the innings with sixes and fours but Prabhsimran’s innings was short-lived owing to Tim Southee in the second over. Prabhsimran slammed two fours and an equal number of sixes to score 23 runs from 12 balls.
Later Dhawan and Rajapaksa handled the reigns excellently. Their knocks helped PBKS cross the 100-run mark in the 11th over, and as PBKS were eyeing a huge total, Umesh Yadav finally gave the breakthrough to the KKR. Rajapaksa mistimed his shot off Yadav’s delivery, to give a good catch to Rinku Singh. Rajapaksa batted at a strike rate of 156.25 to score 52 runs from 32 balls, including five boundaries and two sixes.
Check Twitter’s reactions to Bhanuka Rajapaksa and Sam Curran’s innings
Then, Varun Chakravarthy’s short ball crashed into the stumps to end Dhawan’s innings. The ‘Gabbar’ smashed six boundaries to score 40 runs from 29 balls.
Later, Southee got rid of Jitesh Sharma (21 off 11), while Sunil Narine grabbed his first scalp in the match by dismissing Sikandar Raza (16 off 13). Though Rajapaksa’s wicket slowed down Punjab’s run flow for a while, Sam Curran (who is also the most expensive player in IPL history) took the team to a huge 191/5 in their allotted 20 overs with his cameo. He scored an unbeaten 26 runs from 17 balls with two sixes, while Shahrukh Khan also smashed two fours to score an unbeaten 11 runs from seven balls.
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