Boucher brilliance forces another loss on the Kolkata Knight Riders

With this win the Royal Challengers Bangalore moved up the league table with four points from six games.

The Royal Challengers Bangalore had to rely on the cool head of Mark Boucher, the South African wicketkeeper, who, with 10 needed off the last over, hit the winning runs with just one ball remaining.

Boucher was named man of the match for his 25 from just 13 balls, a vital knock in a very important game for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, as it lifted them off the bottom.

“I'm very happy to have won this one,” said Pietersen, who is returning to England to prepare for the series against the West Indies.

“We won the first game, but have not done too much after that. I hope the boys take this momentum and go forward. A win on Friday would lift us into fourth place in the log. We probably made it a little harder for ourselves than we should have. The (strategy) break in the middle does not help matters, though” Pietersen added.

Pietersen and Coach Ray Jennings had decided to go into the game with three spinners, including Roelof van der Merwe, but it was still something of a surprise when Pietersen opted to bowl the first over himself. But it came as even more of a surprise to Brendan McCullum, the Kolkata Knight Riders captain, who cut the very first ball of the match by Pietersen directly to Virat Kohli at point to be out for a golden duck.

West Indian Chris Gayle then gave the Kolkata Knight Riders a platform of sorts with a score of 40, while Morne van Wyk, the South African wicketkeeper, was the top-scorer with 43 in an innings of 139/6.

The score posted by the Kolkata Knight Riders was simply never enough and although the Royal Challengers Bangalore did give the Kolkata Knight Riders some hope by getting out to rash shots - Brendan McCullum and his men with this loss now have an uphill battle ahead of them to qualify for the Semi - Finals of Season 2009.

“We simply didn't play well enough,” said McCullum. “We had opportunities towards the end and we coughed those up. We played as well for a long period of time, but we have just got to keep believing and come up with ways and means of getting ourselves out of this. We need to win the majority of the rest of our games to get into the semifinals and we have to believe we can do that.”

Jacques Kallis and the 19-year old Shreevats Goswami, who scored 43, put on a fine 69 for the first wicket before the youngster played a lazy slog and was caught behind by Van Wyk off Brad Hodge.

When Kallis fell for 23 in the next over, Royal Challengers Bangalore looked tentative and fell behind the required run rate.
Kohli (19), Pietersen (13) and Roelof van der Merwe (9) perished trying to up the rate, but it was left to the cool head of Boucher and another 19-year old, Manish Pandey, to see the Royal Challengers Bangalore home.

“It was tough,” admitted Boucher. “I thought young Shreevats did well coming in his first game; he got us off to the good start. We probably lost our way a little bit. On a wicket like this it was difficult, it stopped and turned, there was a period where every big shot we tried was getting out. It was one of those days where it came off for you.

We left ourselves too much to do in the last over, but we won and that's what counts.”