Kolkata: Shardul Thakur smashed a counter-attacking half-century before the spinners played their part to perfection as Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) made a memorable homecoming with an 81-run win over Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the IPL here on Thursday.
KKR found themselves tottering at 89/5 before Thakur led a superb recovery with his 29-ball 68 to power his team to 204/7 after RCB opted to bowl.
Coming in at No 7, Thakur hammered the joint-fastest fifty of the season off 20 balls and shared an entertaining 103-run wicket partnership off 47 balls with Rinku Singh (46 off 33).
In reply, RCB failed to last the distance and folded up for 123 in 17.4 overs with the trio of Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine and debutant Suyash Sharma sharing eight wickets between themselves.
It was KKR's first win of the season.
Thakur also took one wicket in his all-round show in KKR's first home match after almost four years.
RCB were going great guns at 44/0 in 4.1 overs in pursuit of the big chase before the Sunil Narine triggered the collapse, foxing Virat Kohli (21; 18b) with a beauty in his 150th IPL match.
Chakravarthy then gave a double blow dismissing Glenn Maxwell (5) and Harshal Patel (0) in three balls before ending up with splendid figures of 3.4-0-15-4.
Nineteen-year-old leg-spinner Suyash Sharma (4-0-30-3) made a dream debut after being included as an 'Impact Player' in place of Venkatesh Iyer.
The long-haired mystery spinner got two wickets in one over to have KKR reeling at 86/8.
Suyash got his maiden wicket when he deceived Anju Rawat (1) with a tossed up delivery and in space of three balls, he scalped Dinesh Karthik (9) with a fuller delivery.
Earlier, David Willey (4-1-16-2) and Karn Sharma (3-0-26-2) took wickets off successive deliveries in powerplay and middle overs respectively to give RCB the edge.
Willey exposed KKR's fragile top-order, when the England left-arm pacer knocked over Iyer (3) and Mandeep Singh (0) off successive deliveries.
It turned from bad to worse for KKR when a reverse-sweeping Nitish Rana (1) got out following a good review from RCB in the very first ball after powerplay.
But RCB frittered away the start with Rahmanullah Gurbaz first taking the charge against a wayward Akash Deep en route to his 44-ball 57, his maiden IPL fifty.
KKR looked in trouble at 47/3 but Gurbaz led the charge against the 'local' Bengal pacer Akash, pulling him for a six before collecting back-to-back boundaries.
Gurbaz took a review to overturn an LBW decision on 30 and raced to a 38-ball fifty with a powerful sweep over long leg boundary.
But RCB again seized the momentum when the leg-spinner Sharma had Gurbaz and Russell off back-to-back deliveries in the 12th over.
Thakur then took Akash to cleaners in his knock studded with nine fours and three sixes.
Apart from Willey (4-1-16-2), none of the RCB bowlers failed to impress and Akash conceded 30 runs from his two overs.
Siraj also looked wayward and returned with 1/44 from his four overs. RCB also leaked 23 runs in extras.