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Openers David Warner and Jonny Bairstow made a slow but steady start in their quest for the elusive victory in their IPL 2020 campaign, but SunRisers Hyderabad never got going.
On KKR's part, they came up with clear plans and it played out well for them. Pat Cummins (1/19), with the new ball, broke the opening stand.
Then the spinners did well in the middle overs to check a nervous and rusty SunRisers top order, before Andre Russell bowled the final over and mountdc the pressure.
Cummins and Sunil Narine gave no room to Bairstow to open his arms and the in-form English opener was soon bowled by the Australian speedster for 5 off 15 balls.
At the end of the fourth over SRH with with 24 runs on the board.
Warner and Manish Pandey tried to revive the Sunrisers innings by steadily increasing the run rate. However, their 35-run stand came to an end in the 10th over with architect-turned mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy having the SRH skipper caught and bowled for 36 off 30. That left the SunRisers in a spot of bother.
But it did not deter the intentions of the Indian middle-order pair Manish Pandey and Wriddhiman Saha, who was batting out of position at No 4. It showed in his 30 off 31.
Manish Pandey did well to anchor the innings with a fifty, but it wasn't big enough.
Pandey slammed three boundaries and two sixes to reach his half-century in the 17th over as SRH stuttered to 118 runs by the end of Cummins's spell.
Breaking the stand took a special effort as Dinesh Karthik introduced Russell to the bowling for the first time in the 18th over.
The Trinidadian bowled a sharp 140-plus full toss which took Manish by surprise. He could only block and send it straight into the bowler's hands.
Russell gave away just 17 runs in his two overs, and was ably supported by Kamlesh Nagarkoti at the other end.
The KKR bowlers never let any SRH batsman get comfortable in the middle and that reflected on the scorecard.
Cummins was certainly the pick among the bowlers as he lived up to his Rs 14.5 crore price tag by giving away just 19 runs for a wicket.
KKR reached the 143 run target with 12 balls to spare.