Kolkata Knight Riders 124/8 (20/20 ov)
Gujarat Lions 125/4 (13.3/20 ov)
Gujarat Lions won by 6 wickets (with 39 balls remaining)
Gujarat Lions, facing a crunch game against Kolkata Knight Riders on Thursday, needed to take tough decisions and the most important was whether to replace the misfiring Dwayne Smith for James Faulkner as the all-rounder in the team.
They persisted with the “Doctor”, as Smith is known.
And he repaid the faith with a spell of four wickets for eight runs in his four overs that proved a shot in the arm for Gujarat who moved up to second place in the Indian Premier League standings, ahead of Royal Challengers Bangalore.
Gujarat captain Suresh Raina also was back in the team after missing a game to attend to the birth of his daughter. He celebrated with an unbeaten knock of 53 to bail out his team in the chase from a tricky position.
After Smith and the Gujarat bowlers had stifled the Kolkata batsmen to just 124 for eight, Gujarat were in a spot of bother at 38 for three but Raina and Aaron Finch (26) paced the chase carefully and managed to still cross over the line comfortably with six wickets and 6.3 overs in hand.
Smith did miss out with the bat, though, as an opener.
Raina, defending him in the post-match presentation on StarSports, said: “Smith is not just a batsman. I always feel he is an all-rounder and that he set the game up for us.”
Smith was named man of the match. Raina, however, was not ready to be comfortable with Gujarat for second place in the table. “We need to play well against Mumbai Indians on Saturday,” he said. “The last two games are important for us.”
During the process of his unbeaten half-century, Raina also managed to wrest back the top place in the IPL run-getters from Virat Kohli.
The left-hander has 4,038 runs with Kohli’s place at the top on 4,002 lasting barely 24 hours after Bangalore’s win over Kings XI Punjab on Wednesday.
Gautam Gambhir, the losing captain of Kolkata, denied anything was wrong in the Kanpur wicket, a neutral venue for the game. “It was a decent wicket. I thought we did not turn up properly.
“We could have scored 150-160. It was one of those days where nothing worked for us.”
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