Bowlers come good at the death

To secure the win that Kolkata Knight Riders needed to retain at least an outside chance of progressing in the Champions League Twenty20, they had to overcome one of their biggest weaknesses in the main draw of the tournament - bowling at the death.

Against South Australia, they turned in an efficient bowling performance for the first 14 overs, keeping the Redbacks to 94 for 3 before a complete meltdown in the final six let Callum Ferguson and Dan Christian double the score. Against Royal Challengers Bangalore, they were initially outstanding with the ball, reducing them to 102 for 6 after 15 overs, before leaking 67 in the final five to Daniel Vettori and the Royal Challengers' tail.

The Knight Riders saved their best for a rainy day. The faithful few who had turned up at the Chinnaswamy Stadium had to wait five hours after the first toss of the day to see some action as persistent showers wiped out the early match and delayed the second. When the cricket finally got underway, they were treated to nearly an hour of muscular hitting from Colin Ingram and JJ Smuts. After 15 overs, the table-topping Warriors were at a rosy 116 for 2 and looking to finish off with five overs of mayhem. The Knight Riders, though, kept things calm with some disciplined bowling.

Brett Lee and Jacques Kallis generally kept it fast and full, not allowing the set Ingram and the experienced Mark Boucher a chance to get under the ball. Lee went for only nine in his two overs at the end while Kallis allowed a satisfactory 17 in his two, despite a couple of impudent clips for four by Boucher. Even L Balaji recovered from a horror start to the final over of the innings - gifting nine off one legal delivery - to limit the Warriors to four runs from the final five deliveries and keep them to 155. Only 39 runs were scored in the final five, despite a shedload of wickets remaining in the last quarter of the innings.

Ingram was deemed Man of the Match for his 61, but the Warriors would have been better served if he had managed to push the tempo in the second half of his innings. When he pulled the last ball of the 11th over behind square leg for four, he had motored to 40 off 25, but he couldn't sustain that pace, taking up 22 deliveries for his final 21 runs.

Warriors captain Johan Botha defended the team's batting at the end of the innings, praising Knight Riders' bowling instead. "We batted really well, that's what I thought," he said. "After 15 overs we were exactly where we wanted to be, we had two guys in at the crease, but they bowled really well. In slippery conditions with a wet ball, they were spot-on. We probably ended up with 15 less than we would have liked."

Knight Riders' captain Gautam Gambhir, who has repeatedly talked of the need for his team to improve the bowling at the end of the innings, was pleased with today's effort. "Pretty happy with the overall performance," he said. "When the opposition has wickets in hand, in the last five-six overs they can accelerate and get 60-70 runs and that is what has been happening in the last three games. The way our bowlers bowled, especially in the last five overs, was tremendous, and restricting them to 155 was a great effort. "The problem for the Knight Riders is that the improvement might have come too late to keep them in the competition.