KOLKATA – Twen­ty20 World Cup-bound all-rounder An­dre Rus­sell pro­duced a cameo with the bat and re­turned to grab a brace of wick­ets, as Kolkata Knight Rid­ers sti­fled Mum­bai In­di­ans to pull off an 18-run vic­to­ry and qual­i­fy for the In­di­an Pre­mier League play­offs on Sat­ur­day.

Sent in at Eden Gar­dens, KKR strug­gled ini­tial­ly be­fore find­ing their foot­ing to gath­er 157 for sev­en in a con­test re­duced to 16 overs per side, Venkatesh Iy­er top-scor­ing with 42 from 21 de­liv­er­ies and Ni­tish Rana lash­ing 33 from 23 balls.

Rus­sell then ar­rived at num­ber five to punch a 14-ball 24 with two fours and two six­es to help KKR fin­ish strong­ly.

In re­ply, Is­han Kis­han struck 40 from 22 balls to give Mum­bai a fly­ing start in a 65-run, open­ing stand off 41 de­liv­er­ies with Ro­hit Shar­ma (19).

Tilak Var­ma belt­ed a 17-ball 32 but Rus­sell weighed in with two for 34 from four overs of medi­um fast while leg-spin­ner Varun Chakravarthy (2-17) and pac­er Harshit Rana (2-34) claimed two wick­ets apiece, to ham­per the Mum­bai run chase.

While off-spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine went wick­et-less, his three overs yield­ed on­ly 21 runs, leav­ing Mum­bai with a dif­fi­cult ask­ing rate of near­ly 13 over the last six overs.

The vic­to­ry kept KKR top of the pile on 18 points, two clear of Ra­jasthan Roy­als who have played a game less.

In-form Nar­ine suf­fered a rare fail­ure when he was bowled by pac­er Jasprit Bum­rah (2-39) for a first-ball ‘duck’ at the start of the sec­ond over, leav­ing KKR stut­ter­ing on ten for two.

How­ev­er, Venkatesh struck half-dozen fours and two six­es in a 30-run, third wick­et stand with cap­tain Shreyas Iy­er (7) be­fore adding 37 for the fourth with Ni­tish.

Rus­sell then dom­i­nat­ed a 39-run, fifth wick­et stand with Ni­tish to help the in­nings get be­yond the 150-run mark.

Need­ing a strong start, Mum­bai got it from Is­han who blast­ed five fours and two six­es to put KKR on the back­foot.

Nar­ine broke the stand when he de­ceived Is­han and got him to hole out to mid-wick­et in the sev­enth over, trig­ger­ing a slide that saw five wick­ets tum­ble for 27 runs.

Rus­sell struck telling blows when he ac­count­ed for the dan­ger­ous Suryaku­mar Ya­dav for 11 and Tim David with­out scor­ing, to en­sure there was no come­back for Mum­bai who re­main one from bot­tom on eight points.

CMC