Russell mania

Kolkata, March 24  

Andre Russell smashed an explosive 49 to spoil David Warner’s scintillating IPL comeback as Kolkata Knight Riders pulled off a dramatic six-wicket win over Sunrisers Hyderabad.

Needing 53 runs from the last three overs, the Jamaican changed the course of the match with his big hitting against Siddarth Kaul, creaming off 19 runs from the 18th over. He retained the strike by taking a smart single and continued his assault on Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who too bled 21 runs in the penultimate over as KKR sealed the 182-run chase with two balls to spare. Russell hammered four sixes and an equal number of boundaries in a run sequence that read 6-6-1-4-1-4-6-4-0-6-1. Youngster Shubman Gill (18*) completed the formalities with two sixes off Shakib-Al-Hasan.

Promoted to open with Chris Lynn, Nitish Rana kept KKR in the hunt with a 47-ball 68. But he departed shortly after a 12-minute interruption caused by tower lights failure. The momentum slowly shifted in favour of SRH but Russell in a matter of minutes changed the complexion of the match.

Warner comes good

Earlier, Warner made a stupendous comeback with a scintillating 85, helping his side reach a challenging 181/3. The Aussie smashed three sixes and nine boundaries in his 53-ball knock. Vijay Shankar also made a fine return to the Orange Army with a quickfire 24-ball 40 following Warner’s exit in the 16th over. Jonny Bairstow complemented Warner well by giving him the maximum strike as the duo raced to the 100-run mark in 10.5 overs in their massive 118-run opening partnership. Having opted to bowl, the KKR bowling attack looked clueless against the rampaging Warner, who was dropped on 21 and 68, by Robin Uthappa and skipper Dinesh Karthik, respectively. Warner brought up his fifty with a six against Andre Russell and then went on to smack Kuldeep Yadav for his second six. 

Power outage 

The match was halted for 12 minutes after one of the floodlights tripped due to a short circuit and home side batsman Nitish Rana blamed his dismissal on the power outage. The incident happened at 7.18 pm when Sunrisers' Rashid Khan was about to bowl his third delivery of the 16th over to Rana, who was batting on 68 then. "I lost my momentum when I came to the dressing room. I could have finished the match if the break was not there," Rana said. — PTI

Russell played a great knock. He took the game away from us. He played all the shots, the bowlers did not bowl bad deliveries but he just smashed them. — Rashid Khan, SRH leg-spinner