All-round Yusuf too much for Pune

It was billed as Sourav Ganguly's payback game against Kolkata Knight Riders. Instead, it proved to be a stern examination on a turner for the Pune Warriors batsmen, and called in to question the home side's decision to play only one specialist spinner as Shakib Al Hasan, Iqbal Abdulla and Yusuf Pathan exploited the generous spin available to tie Pune down. Yusuf later helped Kolkata motor to victory as the franchise taking a big step towards making the play-offs.

Yusuf started the slide for Pune when he had Jesse Ryder going after the second ball of spin in the game, trying to smash it for six but only finding mid-off. It was the beginning of Pune's problems.

After Shakib Al Hasan and Iqbal Abdulla had picked up three wickets, Pune were looking to counter-attack through Robin Uthappa and Yuvraj Singh. Yusuf came back to have Uthappa caught on the deep midwicket boundary by Brett Lee. He finished with 2 for 23 in his four overs as Pune were restricted to 118 for 7.

With the bat, Yusuf targetted Pune's best bowler of the season, Rahul Sharma, cutting him behind point for consecutive boundaries. He hammered Bhuvneshwar Kumar for six over wide long-on as Kolkata raced to victory by the 17th over.