Even though it was the Royal Challengers Bangalore who seemed to be dominating the first half of Kolkata Knight Riders' batting innings after inviting the home team to bat first at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata, one Kolkata player was still determined to make a match out of it. KKR all-rounder Shardul Thakur made the most of the opportunity to come into bat a bit earlier due to the top-order's second successive failure and scored the joint-fastest half-century of the season.
He crossed the fifty-run mark off 20 balls, equalling Jos Buttler's record who had also taken as many balls to notch up the half-century in the match against the Sunrirsers Hyderabad at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium. However, while Buttler had scored the bulk of his runs during the powerplay, Thakur came into bat only on the 12th over finding his side with their back against the ball at 89/5.
However, Shardul came in with a counter-attacking approach and Bangalore were seemingly caught off guard as they ended up panicking and not bowling as per their fields. Thakur was quick to pounce on to all such errors and even outwitted the bowlers on quite a few occasions during his 29-ball 68 run knock. He was involved in a century partnership with Rinku Singh and the duo added 103 runs off 47 balls for the 6th wicket that helped KKR go past the 200-run mark from a difficult situation. Singh ended up scoring 46 off 33 balls.
Twice did Kolkata lose two wickets in two balls in their innings with David Willey, who was playing in place of Reece Topley, removing Venkatesh Iyer and Mandeep Singh in back-to-back balls before half-centurion Rahmanullah Gurbaz (57 off 44) and Andre Russell were dismissed off successive balls by leg-spinner Karn Sharma.
In spite of that, Kolkata managed to post 204/7, thanks largely to Shardul's innings who will have a role to play with the ball later in the match.