Kolkata Knight Riders Defeat Royal Challengers Bangalore By 21 Runs, Return To Winning Ways

Kolkata Knight Riders conjured up a spin magic after Jason Roy's sterling fifty as they snapped their four-match losing streak with a 21-win over Royal Challengers Bangalore in the IPL, in Bengaluru on Wednesday. The English opener led the show with a 29-ball 56 as Kolkata Knight Riders batters fired in unison to notch up a fighting 200/5 after RCB captain Virat Kohli opted to bowl at their home den. But the spin duo of Varun Chakravarthy (3/24) and rookie Suyash Sharma (2/30) created a top-order mayhem, before Andre Russell (2/29) broke Kohli's resistance to restrict RCB to 179 for eight.

Leading the side in absence of Faf Du Plessis, Kohli struck a 34-ball 54 and kept their hopes up in the 201-run chase after du Plessis (17) Glenn Maxwell (5) fell cheaply.

But all hell broke loose when Venkatesh Iyer took a game game-changing catch at deep midwicket boundary to dismiss Kohli, off Russell.

He dived to his left and rolled over but held the ball firmly as Kohli walked back in disbelief.

With 86 needed from 48 balls, it was left for Dinesh Karthik (22) to keep up their chase but Chakravarthy had the last laugh when he had the veteran RCB keeper-batter en route to his three-for, and it seemed all over for RCB.

KKR thus did a double on RCB, having beaten them in their season-opener by 81 runs.

The loss again proved RCB's over-reliance on their Big Three -- Kohli, Du Plessis and Maxwell.

Cruising at 30 for loss, RCB's flying start was halted by the spin duo of Sharma and Chakravarthy who gave KKR a perfect start, sharing three wickets in between them inside the powerplay (58/3).

RCB's regular skipper Fa du Plessis, who sat out only to be subbed as an Impact Player, looked at his ominous best when he smashed Umesh Yadav on