Robin Uthappa (W) led KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS to a simple 6 wickets victory over defending champions MUMBAI INDIANS at Barabati Stadium, Cuttack which KKR is using as a home ground. Well, Early in the match Gautam Gambhir (C) won the toss for KKR and sent Mumbai to bat first. Lendl Simmons (12 of 14 balls) and Chidhambaram Gautam (W) (8 of 9 balls) opened the batting for MI but they departed early by the brilliance of Morne Morkel and Shakib Al Hasan. After those early blows Ambati Rayudu played a decent innings of 33 runs in 27 balls and Rohit Sharma (C) played his part with perfection as he scored most valuable 51 runs in 45 balls to put up a fighting score of 141 runs in a slow pitch but that was not enough to defend against KKR batting line up.
Yet again KKR bowlers have done a brilliant job to restrict MI to such a low score and Sunil Narine as usual was the bowler for KKR with the best figure, he gave only 18 runs in his limited 4 overs and took the most important wicket of Rohit Sharma when he was looking dangerous. Anyway, Shakib Al Hasan also bowled a extraordinary spell by claiming 1 wicket with the economy rate of 5.25. However, Morne Morkel and Piyush Chawla claimed 2 and 1 wicket respectively.
It was a very difficult pitch to bat on, KKR did it better than MI to win the match. In reply, KKR once again made a strong opening partnership with Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir (C). But the most of the runs were scored by Robin Uthappa as he stayed on the pitch almost till the end. Gautam Gambhir (C) and Manish Pandey both went to pavilion by scoring 14 runs while Uthappa played brilliant 52-ball 80 runs knock in the match. After that, Yusuf Pathan did the rest of the job for KKR as he scored 20 runs in just 13 balls.
Anyway, this was the last match for Lasith Malinga in IPL 7 as he will fly to Sri Lanka for playing the international matches. Well in the last match of his, Malinga rally failed to deliver the performance of his class as he claimed 1 wicket by considering 30 runs in 3.4 overs. On the other hand Harbhajan Singh did a incredible job by taking 2 wickets with economy rate of 5.50 but the rest of the bowlers of MI was really failed to support him.
Never the less Robin Uthappa got the Man of the Match award for his brilliant batting display and for bringing three consistent win for his side.