The Kolkata Knight Riders registered their fifth win of Pepsi IPL 2015 and climbed to third in the standings after they defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad by 35 runs at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. In a match where both teams didn’t bat particularly well, KKR did well enough to post 167 runs on the board, after which their bowlers bowled wonderfully to restrict the visitors to 132-9. Earlier in the evening, after being put in to bat, KKR were quick off the blocks with the opening pair of Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir adding 55 runs before the fielding restrictions were relaxed. Both batsmen put away several leg-stump deliveries to the boundary; while Uthappa picked up three boundaries in the first six overs, while Gambhir had struck five boundaries in the same period. The leg-spinner Karn Sharma, brought on to bowl in the seventh over, struck with his second delivery when Gambhir’s top edge found Eoin Morgan at midwicket. The opening partnership was culled at 57, 31 of which had come off Gambhir’s willow. One-drop Manish Pandey and his Karnataka statemate Uthappa went about the business of scoring runs over the next four overs before Karn Sharma struck for a second time; Uthappa’s attempted cover drive to a flatter legbreak was pouched by David Warner diving forward. Uthappa made 30 from 27 balls and KKR were reduced to 81 for 2 after eleven overs. Manish hit one boundary and two sixes before he was involved in a mix up in running with Ryan ten Doeschate and was run out. His 33, made from 26 balls, would be the highest score of the KKR innings. The rest of the batsmen – barring Yusuf Pathan – came in, contributed a few runs before walking back to the pavilion. It was left to Yusuf, who scored 30 from 19 balls, to take his team to a respectable total. To sum up KKR’s innings in brief: each of the top three made 30s but did not carry on, and but for Yusuf Pathan’s blitz at the end, KKR would not have ended with 167 for 7. Not surprisingly, the two spin bowlers in the SRH ranks – Karn Sharma (4-0-29-2) and left-arm spinner Bipul Sharma (4-0-23-1) returned the most effective bowlers. Bhuvneshwar Kumar (2-42) and Moises Henriques (1-20) were the other wicket-takers. When it was their turn to defend, Umesh Yadav rocked the visitors boat at the very start. In an action-packed first over, which had two wides and a boundary, Umesh bowled two peaches; the first one beat the outside edge of David Warner’s bat and took out the off stump. The final ball of the over was an inswinger that found its way between Naman Ojha’s bat and pad and crashed into the stumps. When Shikhar Dhawan pulled a Brad Hogg longhop straight to Manish Pandey at backward squareleg in the fifth over, the chase was killed as a contest. Some very skillful spin bowling, poor running decisions and poor strokeplay resulted in SRH being reduced to 69 for 6 by the end of twelve overs. Moises Henriques was the only notable contributor in the SRH lineup; the Australian waged a lone battle after coming in to bat at the end of the first over, and scored 41 from 33 balls before he was dismissed off the first ball of the fifteenth over. SRH eventually finished their twenty overs at 132 for 9. For the hosts, after Umesh Yadav had provided the two early strikes, the spinners imposed themselves on the SRH batsmen and never let them get away. Johan Botha’s four overs cost 31, Brad Hogg returned figures of 2 for 17 from his four overs, while Piyush Chawla was miserly in his four overs conceding only 16 runs while picking up one wicket. Brief Scores Kolkata Knight Riders 167-7 in 20.0 Overs (Manish Pandey 33, Karn Sharma 2-29) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 132-9 in 20.0 Overs (Moises Henriques 41, Brad Hogg 2-17) Man of the Match: Umesh Yadav, for his 2-34.