Kolkata Knight Riders bounced back after defeat against Punjab Kings in their opener to beat Royal Challengers Bangalore by 81 runs in Match 9 of the TATA IPL 2023 at the Eden Gardens.

Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Faf du Plessis won the toss and elected to bowl. Shardul Thakur’s stunning counter-attacking innings of 68(29) coupled with calculated knocks from Rahmanullah Gurbaz (57 off 44) and Rinku Singh (46 off 33) helped KKR post a daunting 204/7 after recovering from 89/5.

Then the KKR spinners Varun Chakravarthy (4/15), Sunil Narine (2/16) and debutant Suyash Sharma (3/30) spun a web around the RCB batters to bowl them out for 123 and win the match by 81 runs.

Chasing 205, RCB openers Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis got the away side off to a brisk start. Kohli got into the groove early as he hit a couple of well-placed fours to score 10 off the first over from Umesh Yadav. The pair then took on Southee as Kohli smacked one over mid on for a four and Du Plessis smashed a couple of sixes and a four to make it a 23-run over.

Sunil Narine cleaned up Kohli for 21(18) and Varun Chakravarthy had Du Plessis drag one onto the stumps in the next over with RCB reaching 50/2 at the end of the Powerplay. In one over, Chakravarthy had two more, as he knocked back Glenn Maxwell and Harshal Patel. The RCB collapse continued as Narine sent back Shahbaz Ahmed and Shardul struck to remove Bracewell. RCB’s Impact Player Anuj Rawat came to bat at No.8. In an over, Suyash Sharma picked two wickets of Anuj Rawat and Dinesh Karthik to reduce RCB to 86/8. He picked up his third, having Karn Sharma caught at first slip and finished with superb figures of 3/30 on debut. David Willey and Akash Deep cracked a few boundaries but Chakravarthy wrapped the RCB innings on 123 with a brilliant caught and bowled of Akash Deep as KKR won the match by 81 runs.