Rajasthan emerge victorious on boundary count

A tied game and a tied Super Over later Rajasthan emerged victorious on boundary count in the 19^th match of the tournament against Kolkata Knight Riders. The birthday boy, James Faulkner turned the game for Rajasthan with 3 wickets in the penultimate over.

With only 16 needed off 12 balls with six wickets in hand, KKR were looking all set to clinch the measure chase until Faulkner bowled an inspirational over. Kolkata didn’t have the best of starts as they were scoring behind the rate and also had lost 2 wickets with only 49 runs on the board in 9 overs but their captain Gautam Gambhir was playing well to continuously rotate the strike on a slow pitch.

Manish Pandey joined Gambhir in the start of 10^th over and both started to take the bowlers on but soon threw their wickets away after scoring 19 and 45 respectively. With some 63 more needed in 6 overs SuryaKumarYadav and Shakib Al Hassan constructed the chase well from there as they had added 49 runs in 26 deliveries and took their team on the door step of victory but Faulkner had some other ideas.(also read best bowling figures in Indian Premier League)

Shakib forced the match into a Super Over and scored 11 runs in the super over and they would have been pretty confident of defending 11 with Narine. Manish Pandey misjudged the catch in the 4^th ball and adding more to their wounds he gave away a very crucial boundary and with three needed to win off the last ball in the super over Steven Smith showed an amazing presence of mind as he played a dab in to the vacant space at extra cover and ran an easy two to tie the match again and taking Royals to a thrilling win on the basis of a number of boundaries scored in the match.

Earlier, Ajinkya Rahane, top-scored with 72 played through the overs and constructed his innings well to take his team to the competitive 152. Camoes from Steven Smith and Shane Watson helped them get to a fighting total and they fight till the end to clinch the victory from the hands of Kolkata.