IPL 2026: Relief for KKR as Rinku and Roy seal first win of season

Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) registered their first win of IPL 2026 with their spinners bossing on a tailormade surface and their lower middle order bailing out their misfiring top order.

Rajasthan Royals (RR) played the slow surface smartly, got to 81-0 with the bat and then bossed the defence for 15 overs even though they had floundered to score just 155, but all it takes is one bad over for these defences to fall apart.

Dropped on eight, Rinku Singh, struggling for runs so far, began the turnaround with a slog-swept six off Ravi Bishnoi at the start of the 16th over and ended it with a six that brought up his fifty and the win with two balls to spare.

However, it was Anukul Roy, who didn’t get to bowl because of a left-hand heavy RR batting, who took down the difficult deliveries in his 29 off 16 after the ask had reached 67 off 33, the only time it crossed two a ball.

KKR had to fight back from ordinary starts with both bat and ball. Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine reined RR back in with eight overs for 40 runs and five wickets, and a three-wicket 19th over from Kartik Tyagi denied RR a finishing kick.

Jofra Archer, though, set the tone of the defence with a first-ball wicket for the third match in a row before the spinners squeezed the life out of the KKR batting, but luck gave Rinku and KKR a second chance, which they grabbed.

Vaibhav Sooryavasnhi, Yashasvi Jaiswal play the conditions

This has to be the slowest Vaibhav Sooryavanshi (46) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (39) have played together. There was early recognition there that this pitch was not going to be easy for new batters. So they gave themselves some time and looked to prefer quantity of runs to the pace.

However, it didn’t stop Sooryavanshi from hitting Narine for a second-ball six after he introduced himself to Jasprit Bumrah with a first-ball six. It was only a 22-run final powerplay over from Cameron Green that turned 41 into 63.

Varun, Narine check in

Sooryavanshi has a habit of making a big statement early against big bowlers as seen in the cases of Bumrah and Narine. He looked to do the same with Varun second ball he faced, took the big leg side on, and holed out to deep midwicket.

Had he connected with this wrong’un, he would have brought up his slowest IPL fifty. Let it sink in that said fifty would have taken just 28 balls.

KKR now burst through this small opening. Dhruv Jurel was stumped on the reverse sweep off Varun, Narine slowed the ball down to have Jaiswal caught at extra cover for 39 off 29.

Riyan Parag looked to slog Varun and was bowled. In his last over, Narine brought out the carrom ball to first go past Donovan Ferreira and then create a return catch on the last ball of his assignment. The 10 middle overs had produced 5 for 61.

Tyagi turns in career-best figures

Now that the spin bowlers were done, RR were still hopeful of a decent score against an inexperienced pace attack. Shimron Hetmyer and Ravindra Jadeja’s presence meant Roy would still not be used.

However, the left-hand batters executed poorly in the 19th over. Jadeja played an in-between pull to be caught at long leg. Hetmyer looked for a cute sweep on a rank full toss and got a leading edge to deep third.

A third bonus wicket made it a personal best of 3-22 for Tyagi. RR had failed to double their first partnership and needed to do something they had done only three times in their history: successfully defend 155 or below in a full T20 game. (ESPNcricinfo)

The post IPL 2026: Relief for KKR as Rinku and Roy seal first win of season appeared first on News Room Guyana.