Rinku Singh valiant unbeaten 67 went in vain as Kolkata Knight Riders went down by one run against Lucknow Super Giants at Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Saturday.
After being asked to bat first, Lucknow Super Giants lost Karan Sharma (3) early as he miscued a pull off Harshit Rana to Shardul Thakur.
The pair of Quinton De Kock and Prerak Mankad added 41 runs for the second wicket stand before Vaibhav Arora struck twice- first by dismissing Mankad and then Marcus Stoinis for a duck.
Skipper Krunal Pandya then mistimed a slog sweep off Sunil Narine to Rinku for 9. Varun Chakravarthy then struck a body blow by dismissing the well set Quinton De Kock for 28, as Lucknow lost half their side for 73.
Ayush Badoni along with Nicholas Pooran featured in a valuable 74 run stand for the sixth wicket before the former perished to Narine for 25.
Pooran then provided a late flourish in the end by scoring a quickfire 30 ball-58 to lift Lucknow to 176/8 in their 20 overs.
Chasing 177, Kolkata opening pair of Jason Roy and Venkatesh Iyer got Kolkata off to a fantastic start. The duo added 61 runs for the opening wicket before the latter chipped a catch to Ravi Bishnoi at extra cover off Krishnappa Gowtham for 24.
The dangerous Roy was then cleaned up by a skidder from Krunal Pandya for a breezy 28 ball-45. The likes of Nitish Rana (8), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (10) and Andre Russell (7) fell soon after leaving KKR in trouble at 120/5.
Left hander Rinku smashed Naveen-ul-Haq for 20 runs in the penultimate over to bring the equation to 21 off the final over.
Despite the southpaw hitting 2 sixes and a four off Yash Thakur, Kolkata agonizingly fell short by a run.