There were two matches on Sunday, the 19th day of the tenth edition of IPL2017. As Gujarat Lions squared off against the Kings XI Punjab on their home turf at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Rajkot, the Kolkata Knight Riders took on the Royal Challengers Bangalore at home at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata.
The Gujarat Lions won the toss and put Punjab in to bat. Manan Vohra departed without troubling the scorers much but Hashim Amla came through with a scintillating 65 off 40. Shaun Marsh (30 off 24), Glenn Maxwell (31 off 18) and Axar Patel (34 off 17) made significant contributions to take their team to 188 having lost 7 wickets.
GL made a stuttering start and the openers Brendon McCullum and Aaron Finch left early. Skipper Suresh Raina made 32 off 24 and Dinesh Karthik made 58 off 44 but this was in vain. A later spurt by Andrew Tye (22 of 12) failed to get the home team to victory and GL ultimately fell short by 26 runs.
His stellar feints with the bat had failed to steer his team to victory earlier. This time however, he was named Player of the Match for his knock of 65 runs and also recipient of the Orange Cap. The perfect catch of the match went to Marcus Stoinis. Glenn Maxwell won the most sixes award and Axar Patel was named most stylish player of the match for his 34 runs and 2 wicket contribution.
Royal Challengers Bangalore won the toss and decided to field first. Sunil Naraine gave his team a good start with his 34 off 17 balls. However, none of the others really got going. The other batsmen made modest contributions to get KKR up to just 131. KKR were all out in 19.3 overs.
Royal Challengers Bangalore made an absolutely disastrous showing with 3 players getting out for ducks and not a single player getting into double figures. The scorecard was a litany of poor scores: Chris Gayle out for 7, Kohli departing on the first ball that he faced, A B DeVilliers out for 8 and so on. Kedar Jadhav was the highest scorer with 9 runs and RCB were all out for 49 in the 10th over. Three KKR bowlers picked up three wickets each: Nathan Coulter-Nile, Chris Woakes and Colin de Grandhomme.
The Perfect catch of the match award went to A B DeVilliers. Nathan Coulter-Nile was man of the match. Sunil Narain won the maximum sixes award as well as the stylish player award. This match keeps RCB firmly at the bottom of the points table with the worst batting average. They now have the dubious distinction of having scored the lowest total in IPL history.
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