No sooner Chris Gayle rung the bell at the Eden Gardens, it looked like it was an alarm for the bowlers that the Kolkata was once again going to witness the Gayle storm. If one had to go by the records, it looked like a mistake when R Ashwin won the toss and opted to chase. The belief just solidified with Chris Lynn hitting the ball out of the park quite frequently despite the fact Sunil Narine departed on 6 in the first over itself. Robin Uthappa also came in handy and chipped in with 34 off 23 and built a partnership of 72 runs but soon made way to the pavilion after he lofted the ball to the boundary and it landed to Karun Nair at deep midwicket. You can watch the video highlights of the match here.

Nitish Rana got run out on 3 but Dinesh Karthik played a captain’s knock and contributed 43 to the total. His innings comprised six fours. Andrew Tye got rid of the KKR skipper and Andre Russell, Shubham Gill, Tom Curran and Piyush Chawla scored made a few runs here and there. This helped KKR post a total of 191/7. Have a look at the full scorecard here.

Chris Gayle and KL Rahul opened the innings for KXIP and the wicket-keeper started the innings by hitting big. Gayle joined the bandwagon and started lofting the ball out of the park. It wouldn’t say that KXIP made an effective use of the power play as they scored 73 for 0. KKR had scored 8 boundaries in the first 6 over whereas the KXIP smashed 14. It looked a cakewalk for KXIP to reach the total but at 8.2 over rain interrupted the game and the contest was delayed by 90 minutes. The play then was reduced to 13 overs and the target was 125 runs. KL Rahul got out by scoring 60 and Chris Gayle did the best what is known for thus finishing the innings with a massive tall six.

As of now, team Kings XI Punjab tops the IPL 2018 Point Table as they have won 4 games out of 5. The team has toppled MS Dhoni-led CSK to number two. Whereas the Dinesh Karthik led KKR is on number 3 with 6 points.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Apr 21, 2018 09:42 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).