Chennai: Skipper Nitish Rana and Rinku Singh slammed fifties apiece en route to a 99-run match-winning stand to guide Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) to a comfortable six-wicket win over Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in an Indian Premier League match here on Sunday.
Rana remained unbeaten on 57 off 44 balls while Rinku made 54 off 43 deliveries to set up KKR's chase of 145 runs after they lost their first three wickets for 33 runs inside the fifth over.
KKR finished at 147 for four in 18.3 overs with Rana leading from the front after making the most of a dropped chance.
KKR's cause was helped to a large extent by a superb bowling effort earlier by spin duo of Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine, who picked up two wickets each.
The defeat also puts on hold CSK's chances of sealing a playoffs berth as the home side is in second spot with 15 points.
KKR, on the other hand, moved to 12 points with a match to play but their hopes rest on other results.
Rana and Rinku, both left-handers, showed necessary skills and patience on a tacky pitch to negate the impact of CSK spinners after the home team had posted a moderate 144/6 in 20 overs.
The match-winning partnership between Rana and Rinku ended when the latter was run out by a direct hit from Moeen Ali.
CSK spinners -- Ravindra Jadeja, Maheesh Theekshana and Moeen -- could not do any damage after Deepak Chahar had provided the initial breakthroughs.
CSK struck an early blow when Chahar got Rahmanullah Gurbaz (1) as he failed to keep his square-drive down and was well caught by Tushar Deshpande close to the boundary.
After six overs, KKR were 46/3 with Chahar having picked up all the three wickets to fall -- Gurbaz, Jason Roy (12) and Venkatesh Iyer (9).
Rana got a life on 18 when Matheesha Pathirana dropped a catch running in from the boundary off Moeen.
In the 13th over bowled by Moeen, Rana played two superb shots on the off-side to pick up boundaries and followed it up with a few more cracking strikes in the 15th over by Maheesh Theekshana.
Earlier, Mahendra Singh Dhoni's decision to drop down the order backfired as CSK lost wickets at regular intervals to be restricted to the modest score.
Dhoni, who came out to bat at No. 7, remained unbeaten on two off three balls.
Opting to bat, CSK were 72/5 in in the 11th over before Shivam Dube underlined his utility, hammering a 34-ball 48 not out (1x4, 3x6s) to help the hosts somewhat recuperate in the company of Jadeja (20 off 24).
The duo shared 68-run stand for the sixth wicket to take CSK close to the 150-run mark, which at one point of time looked out of reach on a sluggish pitch.
Spin duo of Narine (2/15) and Chakravarthy (2/36) were the pick of the bowlers for KKR and they were ably supported by Shardul Thakur (3-0-15-1) and Vaibhav Arora (1/30).
