CHENNAI: Mitchell Starc's three wickets and some economical bowling from spinners helped Kolkata Knight Riders restrict Lucknow Super Giants to 161 for seven at the Eden Gardens on Sunday.
Shreyas Iyer won the toss for Kolkata and opted to bowl first.
Lucknow's Quinton de Kock started well with two back-to-back sixes off Mitchell Starc, but Vaibhav Arora sent him back for 10.
Deepak Hooda, batting at three struggled to get going and eventually fell for eight off Starc as Ramandeep Singh took a sensational catch at backward point. Captain KL Rahul and Ayush Badoni, fresh off his half-century against Delhi Capitals, was promoted to four, but he too struggled to get going early in his innings. Rahul tried to anchor the innings, but it became his downfall when he holed out to Ramandeep after scoring 39 off 27 balls.
Marcus Stoinis tried to get the scoring rate going, but Varun Chakravarthy cut his counterattack short.
Nicolas Pooran, after his duck in the previous picture, had a lot on his shoulders with Lucknow struggling at 95 for four after 12 overs. Sunil Narine was at his absolute best in this passage when he took Badoni's wicket and did not give away any boundary. Pooran went after Arora and Harshit Rana and took Lucknow past 150. Before the West Indies batter could make any more damage Starc got his wicket off the first ball of the final over in which he gave away only six runs.
Starc also took the wicket of Arshad Khan and Lucknow managed to score 161 for seven in the first innings.
LSG: 161/7 in 20 overs (Nicholas Pooran 45; Mitchell Starc 3/28) vs KKR