KKR blocks the joy of Punjab with easy win : Gambhir & Uttappa made marvellous opening efforts

Uttappa hitting a sixer

KKR blocks the joy of Punjab with easy win : Gambhir & Uttappa made marvellous opening efforts

KKR is quite lucky with amazing openers. Especially in this season IPL 7, all the matches are won with the help of openers Gauti and Uttappa only. There is tremendous partnership for the zeroth wicket between them for the last 4 matches. KKR gave big shock to Punjab on Sunday at Cuttak. After successive defeats, KKR has come up with good show. Gambhir with 63 runs notout in 45 balls played captaincy innings. In this one side match, KKR won by 9 wickets against Punjab.

Cuttak: In the first innings, legendary opener Sehwag hit 72 runs in 50 balls with 11 fours & 1 six. But Piyush Chawla with 3/19 and Morney Morkel with 2/20 have bowled well, blocking the Punjab for 149 runs only for 8 wickets. While chasing, KKR started the innings with high momentum. Punjab bowlers could not stop Uttappa. Uttappa hit 46 runs in 28 balls with 8 fours and 1 six. Manish Pandey too supported Gauti with 36 runs not out in 35 balls. Hence, KKR has chased the target of 150 runs easily.

In the last two matches, Gambhir and Uttappa made 100 run partnership as openers. In this match, they gave good opening contribution. Uttappa hit successive shots in 6th and 7th overs. Score reached 68 runs in 7 overs. After Uttappa was out, Gauti fulfilled the target mission with the help of Manish. Major damage has happened to Punjab in the first innings itself. With the unexpected performance from Sehwag, atleast Punjab made good score.

Dangerous basemen Maxwell scored only 14 runs while Miller scored only 13 runs. Sending them to pavilion, dominance of KKR started. Sehwag tried to fill that gap. Off course, 150 is not a big target to KKR. For 10 overs, its score reached 85 runs. But run rate came down from 11th over onwards. In 11th over, Maxwell was out. When Sehwag was out, score was 112 runs. In the next over Miller was sent to pavilion by Umesh. Next batsmen of Punjab could not bear the terrific bowling and fielding of KKR. In last 4 overs, Punjab made only 26 runs.