Mumbai Indians’ Ashwani Kumar (R) celebrates with team-mates after taking the wicket of Kolkata Knight Riders’ Andre Russell | AFP
Ashwani Kumar produced a lethal display of pace bowling on a dream debut to help Mumbai Indians skittle out Kolkata Knight Riders and help them register their first victory of the season by eight wickets at the Wankhede Stadium, here on Monday.
Ashwani, who hails from Punjab, had figures of 4/24 as he rattled the KKR batting with his penetrative pace variations and length as KKR were bowled out for 116 in 20 overs.
Chasing KKR’s paltry 117 for a win, Mumbai Indians were barely troubled as opener Ryan Rickelton blasted 62 off 41 balls with four fours and five sixes. Rohit Sharma once again failed with the bat scoring just 13 as MI wrapped up the match with over seven overs to spare reaching 121/2 in 12.5 overs. Suryakumar Yadav smashed a quickfire 27 off just nine balls with three fours and two maximums to finish things off in style.
Earlier, the game began as Trent Boult delivered a jolt to Kolkata Knight Riders first up as he knocked out the stumps of their star all-rounder Sunil Narine off the fourth ball of the innings.
If that wasn’t enough, Deepak Chahar made it double whammy for Mumbai Indians when he had the fiery and in-form Quinton De Kock caught at mid-off by debutant Ashwani Kumar.
New man and Mumbaikar Angkrish Raghuvanshi was in a counter-attacking mode as he smashed two consecutive fours off Chahar.
KKR skipper and another Mumbaikar Ajinkya Rahane had joined Raghuvanshi and immediately went on an attacking mode.
Things went from bad to worse for the Knight Riders as they lost Rahane, who was snapped up at deep backward point by Tilak Varma, after a bit of a fumble, trying to hit the debutant Ashwani Kumar out of the park.
The powerplay was turning out to be a disaster of sorts for the Knights with the Mumbai Indians pace troika creating a havoc in their top order ranks.
Venkatesh Iyer didn’t stick around for too long either as he was sent back to the pavilion by Chahar through a Ryan Rickelton catch.
At 41/4 after the end of the powerplay, KKR were in all sorts of trouble looking to set a competitive target for Mumbai Indians in their own den.
It seemed like the young Raghuvanshi was waging a lone battle for the visiting team.
That thought didn’t last long either when he holed out to Naman Dhir running in from deep square leg off MI skipper Hardik Pandya.
MI’s new kid on the block Vignesh Puthur was introduced in the eighth over and was taken to the cleaners off his first over as Rinku Singh and Manish Pandey tonked him for two sixes.
Pandey and Rinku got their act together and were stitching together a partnership going at a run-rate of nine.
