Kolkata: Sourav Ganguly's brilliant knock saw the Kolkata Knight Riders defeating the Deccan Chargers by 24 runs on Thursday.
This win saw the Kolkata Knight Riders move to fifth place in the points table while the Deccan Chargers came down to seventh place.
Chasing 181 at over nine an over was never going to be easy for Adam Gilchrist's boys. Though they had enough wickets in hand they lost because they failed to explode at the right time.
Andrew Symonds (45) couldn't take more than 6 runs off the penultimate over from Shane Bond and this left the Deccan Chargers requiring 34 runs from the last over from Chris Gayle. The West Indian sent down some tight deliveries as the team from Hyderabad fell short by 24 runs.
Herschelle Gibbs (50) did take the Chargers off to a great start scoring 13 runs off the first over bowled by Mohnish Parmar. Parmar was made to realize that copying Muttiah Muralitharan's action is quite easy while taking wickets like the Lankan great is not.
Despite losing Adam Gilchrist (9) early, Gibbs combined well with Monish Mishra (29) to put together a 46-run partnership. They were doing okay when they reached 107/2 in the 13th over but unlike KKR they could not manage a late surge as Shane Bond and Murali Kartik made scoring difficult.
Earlier the Kolkata Knight Riders won the toss and elected to bat first. Sourav Ganguly struck a four off the very first ball from Kemar Roach to make his intentions crystal clear. Fellow opener Chris Gayle too opened his account with a four but did not progress further and was dismissed by Andrew Symonds.
It would be necessary at this point to devote a paragraph to Man-of-the-Match Sourav Ganguly. For today 'Dada' brought back some very old memories. When the 'Prince of Kolkata' was not making room and hitting boundaries over the bowler's head, he was teasing the bowlers with some sweet backfoot drives past diving fielders. Rohit Sharma and Harmeet Singh were made to cut a sorry figure when the left-hander employed the late cut.
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