IPL-2:KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS VS KINGS XI PUNJAB:Chris Gayle helped the Knight Riders to register first win in IPL 2009

 

 

Both teams-Kolkata knight riders & Kings XI punjab- would have been aware that this was a match to regain credibility with their supporters. 
For Kolkata, there was still no Mendis in the playing eleven, although they made one change - dropping Agarkar for  Yashpal Singh. Punjab retained the same eleven that played against Delhi.

 
Brendom McCullum won the toss, and opted to field.

Kolkatta started off well, with Ishant Sharma finding his rhythm and getting Karan Goel caught in the slips by Chris Gayle in his first over. That brought Irfan Pathan to the crease, who was promoted to No.3. Irfan swung his bat and was looking dangerous, when Sourav Ganguly turned things around for his team with a superb first over that saw him pick up two wickets and beat Yuvraj's bat a couple of times.
Punjab had their best batsmen - Yuvraj and Sangakkara - at the crease, and they tried to rebuild the innings. Their partnership of 56, scored in fairly quick time, was brought to an end by a needless run-out when Yuvraj correctly did not respond to Sangakkara's call for a rash single.  Yuvraj fell trying to hit one six , and a cameo inning by Mahela Jayawardene took Punjab to a respectable 158 for 6.

To successfully chase that, Kolkata needed one batsman to get stuck in and play a long innings, and it had to be one of the top four. The innings got off to a slow start, but then the King's Eleven were hit by a Gayle force.
Chris Gayle exploded in the fourth over, smashing sixes and fours. He was dropped twice - by Karan Goel at mid-wicket and by Sangakkara behind the stumps. McCullum's wicket pulled things back for the King's XI a touch, but Gayle still found the timing to smash yet another six, before rain came down & that turned out to be the end of the match.

The West Indies captain smashed four sixes in his 26-ball unbeaten 44 to fire Kolkata Knight Riders.  Kolkata were sitting pretty at 79 for 1 after 9.2 overs, and  Duckworth-Lewis confirmed that they were ahead of the required score by 11 runs.
Punjab lost their second successive match after a rain interruption, and although they were clearly not in the driving seat when the rains came down.

 

Turning Point of the Match:
Karan Goel dropping Gayle, when the latter was on 2 off 4 balls. Sangakkara dropped Gayle too but that was when he had already powered to 32 off 17 balls. Goel's drop was by far the costlier of the two - he scored 42 off 22 balls after that drop, which was a match-winning effort.

Man of the Match:
Chris Gayle for his hurricane innings that made the difference between victory and defeat.