Kolkata: Sunday couldn’t have been better. The first weekend post the Indian Premier League’s (IPL) commencement this year was full of thrill and excitement for IPL lovers. It was the Mumbai Indians who took on the Kolkata Knight Riders at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. Earlier on the same day, the Sunrisers Hyderabad faced the Gujarat Lions at Hyderabad. The winners were the Mumbai Indians and the Sunrisers Hyderabad.
It was all so sweaty and warm at the Wankhede and it was a full house. The Kolkata Knight Riders went out to the field to carry on from where they left in the last match, but unfortunately though, the opposition got the better of them. Manish Pandey played really well and scored an unbeaten 81 off 47 balls, but that wasn’t enough. The Mumbai Indians beat them by 4 wickets in a close encounter. Apart from the setback of the loss, KKR suffered a huge blow when star opener and Orange Cap holder Chris Lynn injured his shoulder while fielding.
In the first match, David Warner’s Sunrisers Hyderabad defeated Suresh Raina’s Gujarat Lions by 9 wickets. A superb bowling display by Hyderabad’s Rashid Khan sealed the fate of the game and the Gujarat Lions suffered their second loss in a row this year and are really struggling. Hyderabad skipper Warner too contributed to the win.
Brief Scores: Mumbai Indians 180/6 (Nitish Rana 50, Parthiv Patel 30; Ankit Rajpoot 3/37) beat Kolkata Knight Riders 178/7 (Manish Pandey 81*, Chris Lynn 32; Kunal Pandya 3/24) by 4 wickets.
Sunrisers Hyderabad 140/1 (David Warner 76*, Moises Henriques 52*; Praveen Kumar 1/16) beat Gujarat Lions 135/7 (Dwayne Smith 37, Jason Roy 31; Rashid Khan 3/19) by 9 wickets.