Butter-fingered Knight Riders, and an economical Narine

Morne Morkel's pace and height allows him to extract disconcerting bounce with ease, and an early wicket only added to the pressure Kings XI Punjab faced while padding up to him. Morkel came on to bowl his first over with a fielder at forward short leg and sent down a few deliveries that had Virender Sehwag and Wriddhiman Saha hopping around.

Kolkata Knight Riders' wins in this season so far cannot entirely be attributed to their fielding. In the first three matches, they gave all the key batsmen a reprieve - Rohit Sharma was dropped at the Eden Gardens, Chris Gayle was dropped twice and on Saturday, Glenn Maxwell was the lucky one to receive a reprieve when Yusuf Pathan dropped a sitter at deep midwicket. The dropped chance was enough to have team mentor Wasim Akram giving catching tips to Pathan during the strategic time-out. Maxwell added another 20 runs to his score before holing out to Andre Russell at deep cover.

One of the question marks for Knight Riders heading into the season was how Sunil Narine would perform in the tournament with a remodeled action. He had figures of 0 for 28 and 0 for 26 after the first two matches but the performance against Kings XI was a return to the familiar sight of a measly economy rate. Narine also had a wicket to show for - getting Axar Patel to cap off returns of 4-0-17-1.

Andre Russell had hacked, swiped and slogged his way to 66 off 35 deliveries and with the support of Yusuf Pathan had taken Knight Riders to the brink of victory. With the scores level, Russell went for another huge slog off Mitchell Johnson but missed his line and was bowled. With the win almost in the pocket, the dug-out greeted him cheerfully with fist-bumps and hugs.