Rahul Tripathi and Aiden Markram scored sparkling half centuries as the Sunrisers Hyderabad defeated the Kolkata Knight Riders by seven wickets at the Brabourne Stadium in Mumbai on Friday.
After being put into bat by SRH skipper, Marco Jansen struck early as Aaron Finch (7) inside-edged an attempted heave to Nicholas Pooran behind the stumps.
T Natarajan then struck twice in the fifth over- first by cleaning up Venkatesh Iyer (6) and then dismissing Sunil Narine, caught off a low toss by Shashank Singh for 6.
Skipper Shreyas Iyer and Nitish Rana added 39 runs for the fourth wicket before the former was dismissed by a brilliant yorker from Umran Malik for 28.
Sheldon Jackson departed cheaply, top edging a short ball from Malik to Natarajan at fine leg.
Rana’s fine knock of 54 ended, when he nicked a full delivery outside off from left arm pacer to Pooran.
A late blitz from Andre Russell (49)* in the end took KKR to a respectable score of 175/8 in their allotted 20 overs. His knock came off 25 balls with 4 fours and 4 sixes.
Natarajan was the pick of the bowlers for Kolkata with figures of 3/37.
Chasing 176, Sunrisers lost both Abhishek Sharma (3) and Kane Williamson (17) inside the powerplay to Pat Cummins and Russell respectively.
Tripathi along with Markram brought the innings back on track with a 94 run stand for the third wicket before the former miscued a pull off Russell to Venkatesh Iyer at long-on for a quickfire 37 ball-71.
The 27 year old South African star finished off in style by smacking Cummins for consecutive sixes, to take Sunrisers to a comprehensive win with 13 balls to spare. Markram was unbeaten on 68 off just 36 balls.