Punjab Kings, Knight Riders share the spoils after Eden Gardens washout

The Punjab Kings moved to the top of the Tata IPL log, while the Kolkata Knight Riders picked up their first point of the competition when their clash at Eden Gardens in Kolkata was washed out on Monday night.

Punjab were one of four unbeaten teams left in the competition, after they went into the match having beaten the Gujarat Titans and Chennai Super Kings in their first two games, and kept that record intact, but will be disappointed to have not had the chance to continue their winning run.

The Knight Riders will be relieved to have finally gotten themselves on the board, after two losses in their opening two matches, and will probably be the happier of the two sides after they got off to a poor start after winning the toss and choosing to bat first.

Punjab’s Aussie fast bowler Xavier Bartlett picked up two early wickets, to reduce the Knight Riders to 16 for two in the second over, before they reached 25 for two in the fourth when the rain came pouring down and only relented towards the end. But it unfortunately didn’t leave enough time to get the field ready for a five-over shootout.

Bartlett was immaculate in his first over. He seemed to have the ball on a string, seaming it past the outside edge of opener Finn Allen’s (6) bat twice, before he nicked to keeper Prabhsimran Singh at the third time of asking.

New batter Cameron Green (4) luckily edged his first ball past the slip cordon for a boundary, but wasn’t so lucky the second as Bartlett found the edge again through to Singh, for a superb start to his evening. But he couldn’t kick on, as in his second over, they were chased from the field by the weather.

The Knight Riders now turn their attention to the Lucknow Super Giants on Thursday, while Punjab will be up against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Saturday.

KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS: Finn Allen, Ajinkya Rahane (capt), Cameron Green, Angkrish Raghuvanshi (wk), Rovman Powell, Rinku Singh, Ramandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Navdeep Saini, Vaibhav Arora, Kartik Tyagi

PUNJAB KINGS: Prabhsimran Singh (wk), Cooper Connolly, Shreyas Iyer (capt), Nehal Wadhera, Shashank Singh, Marcus Stoinis, Marco Jansen, Xavier Bartlett, Vijaykumar Vyshak, Arshdeep Singh, Yuzvendra Chahal