2010 IPL 3 Match 13: Rajasthan Royals Finally Taste Success As KKR Suffer Second Defeat

Yusuf Pathan cannot be kept out of the action. If he is not plundering runs, apparently he is keen to turn his arm over as he did successfully against the Kolkata Knight Riders at the Motera stadium in the Rajasthan Royals’ “home” ground in Ahmedabad.
After a brilliant start, the Kolkata Knight Riders are settling into another losing streak they will be desperate to turn around. With the Rajasthan team in the doldrums, KKR were expected to be all over their hosts. But as it turned out the Knight Riders were in for a nasty surprise.
Abhishek Jhunjhunwala and Adam Voges stood up for the Royals at a time when they have had little apart from Yusuf Pathan going for them. Laid low by poor form of the Indian talent and the injuries and absence of their foreign players, the Rajasthan Royals needed their bench warmers to show up and they came to the party even as Ashoke Dinda, Shane Bond and Ishant Sharma shared two wickets apiece but unable to control the flow of runs and momentum.
Naman Ojha and Faiz Fazal got starts but it was Jhunjhunwala’s forty-five and Voges’ thirty-seven that gave the Rajasthan Royals heart in the contest. Their quickfire innings gave Royals a decent total of 168 and a competitive one for the Kolkata Knight Riders.
Expected to roll over the Rajasthan Royals, the KKR are once again in danger of slipping into the doldrums themselves, as they slipped up badly against the underdog team of the tournament.
It would be particularly disappointing given that their top five batsmen got into double digit figures but failed to figure out the winning mantra in the match.
Opening the bowling for the Royals, Yusuf Pathan made light work of Manoj Tiwary and then decimated the dangerous Brad Hodge who was looking to stable matters for KKR with thirty-six runs. Chesteswar Pujara got a better start, making twenty-nine runs while the KKR captain, Sourav Ganguly, looked on track with thirty-three runs. But the problem for the KKR was the lack of acceleration that let them stagnate when they should have scored runs at a faster clip to register an expected win. Instead they let Royals romp home to their first win of the 2010 IPL 3 by a hefty margin (by Twenty20 standards) of thirty-four runs.