KOLKATA Knight Riders' poor record against Mumbai Indians continued on Wednesday as they succumbed to a 49-run loss in their opening match of this edition at Abu Dhabi.
This was Mumbai's 20th win out of 26 encounters between the two franchises. With the win, the four-time champions finally won a match on UAE soil after losing their previous six and this put their campaign back on track after a first-match loss.
The victory was achieved thanks to a blitzkrieg from skipper Rohit Sharma up top which helped his team post 195/5. The bowling unit then stuck to their task as Dinesh Karthik's team ended up with 146/9 at the end of the stipulated overs.
Kolkata were not helped by some strange decisions taken by their skipper, choosing not to utilise record purchase Pat Cummins at the start of the Mumbai innings which gave Rohit the platform to get set before unleashing carnage.
The 33-year-old has always enjoyed batting against Kolkata and that trend continued as he smacked a 54-ball 80. In the process, the India vice-captain created the record for most runs against an IPL team with 904 runs against the team from Kolkata.
That was not the only record the opener broke as the six maximums he struck in his knock ensured that he became only the fourth to hit 200 sixes in the IPL.
Former Kolkata recruit Suryakumar Yadav gave his skipper good company as the du0 kept punishing the loose deliveries, stitching together a partnership of 90 off only 58 deliveries.
While chasing the target, the Kolkata batsmen never got going with Cummins top-scoring with 33 off 12 balls.
Despite the dew, the opposition bowlers did a commendable job with Trent Boult, James Pattinson, Jasprit Bumrah and Rahul Chahar all picking up a couple of wickets. The Mumbai innings ended up taking 125 minutes to complete. It remains to be seen if the match referee has a talk with both captains post the contest.