Andre Russell shinned with both bat and ball, as Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Kings XI Punjab by 28 runs at Eden Gardens,on Wednesday.
KXIP included David Miller, Hardus Viljoen, Varun Chakravarthy and Andrew Tye in place of Nicholas Pooran, Sam Curran, Ankit Rajpoot and Mujeeb Ur Rahman, while KKR went in with an unchanged line up.
After being sent into bat by Ravi Ashwin, KKR got off to a rollicking start as Sunil Narine smashed debutant Varun Chakravarthy for 25 runs in his first over.
However Mohammed Shami in the third over bagged Chris Lynn for 10 runs, while Hardus Viljoen dismissed Sunil Narine for a quickfire 24.
The pair of Nitish Rana and Robin Uthappa took on the KXIP bowlers with some lusty hitting by adding 110 runs for the 3rd wicket before Varun dismissed the dangerous looking Rana for a well compiled 63.
Russell on 3, was given a chance by Mohammed Shami as he was bowled off a no-ball. However the 30-year old Jamaican made full use of the reprieve as he hammered five sixes and three fours in his blistering knock of 48.
Uthappa remained unbeaten on 67, as the home side posted a massive score of 218 for 4 in their allotted 20 overs.
Chasing a mammoth total of 219, Kings XI Punjab started badly as they lost Lokesh Rahul cheaply in the second over.
Chris Gayle looked good in his short stay, until he was caught by Prasidh Krishna off Russell.
Sarfaraz Khan and Mayank Agarwal steadied the Kings XI Punjab innings for a while, by putting on 23 runs for the third wicket, before the West Indies all rounder soon struck again, by dismissing the latter for 13.
The 28 year old Agarwal and David Miller brought KXIP into the game, as the duo added 74 runs for the 4th wicket,before Piyush Chawla in the 16th over got rid of the former for a well compiled 58.
David Miller and Mandeep Singh then combined and added an unbeaten 56 runs for the 5th wicket,but failed to take the visitors to victory. Miller reached his fifty off 36 balls, while Mandeep remained unbeaten on 33 as Kings XI Punjab fell short of the target as they ended up with 190/4.
Andre Russell was declared the Man of the Match for his all round performance.
The seventh match of the IPL would be played between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians on Thursday at Bengaluru on March 28.