IPL 2024: Phil Salt and the Kolkata spinners set up comfortable win over Lucknow

Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy did well with the ball to restrict the Lucknow Super Giants, before Phil Salt made quick-work in the chase.

The Kolkata Knight Riders got a win over the Lucknow Super Giants for the first time in four meetings in the Indian Premier League, when the two teams met at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Sunday.

Lucknow was put into bat first after Kolkata captain Shreyas Iyer won the toss. The away team managed to put up a total of 161/7 in their allotted 20 overs.

The target would eventually prove to be much too low as the Knight Riders, powered by opener Phil Salt’s unbeaten 89 marched home to a comprehensive eight-wicket win, with 26 balls to spare.

The win sees the Knight Riders remain firm in second position in the league table with eight points – four wins out of five matches. They trail only Rajasthan Royals on 10 points. The Lucknow team meanwhile is in fifth spot with three wins and as many losses.

Turning point of the match

Mitchell Starc was the pick of the Kolkata Knight Riders bowlers, finishing with figure of 3/28 in his four overs. But it was the middle overs – through the efforts of spinners Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy – that really swung the momentum in favour of the Kolkata team.

The Lucknow team had put up a total of 49/2 after the batting powerplay. In the next 10 overs, with both Narine and Chakravarthy bowling out their quotas, the scoring rate had been decreased considerably.

In a mixture of steady, tight bowling that did not offer the batters much room, Narine and Chakravarthy managed to restrict the Lucknow Super Giants to just 69 runs off the 60 balls between overs 6 and 16.

Narine in particular, who finished with figures of 1/17 in his four overs, was not hit for a single boundary.

With the score at 118/5 after 16, Kolkata’s spin-duo did a remarkable job at curbing the run rate to give their team a smaller target to chase.

The Field’s Player of the Match

A rather easy pick this one, with Phil Salt taking the honours. The English batter picked up his second half-century of the season – the previous one also coming at the Eden Gardens. He did need a bit of fortune though, as he was put down in the deep by Arshad Khan off the bowling of Shamar Joseph when he was on 31.

Salt’s batting unbeaten 89 off 37 innings was peppered with 14 boundaries and three sixes – 74 runs came just through his shots to and over the boundary.

‘Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t’

In a format that has increasingly favoured batters, Narine’s efforts with the ball saw him not concede a single boundary – that too after bowling a full quota of overs.

“The first thing to do is to keep it as tight as possible. Some games it happens, some games it doesn’t. But I think, once you’re in control of the game, it’s easier to bowl as a spinner.”— Sunil Narine, after the match, about not giving away any boundaries