A classy Sachin Tendulkar lorded over Kolkata Knight Riders bowlers and the home side cruised to a seven-wicket win in the DLF IPL 3 match at the Barabourne stadium here on Monday night. Tendulkar made an unbeaten 71 as Mumabi Indians continued their unbeaten run in the tournament. Chris Gayle’s 75 runs went in vain as it was overshadowed by vintage stuff from Tendulkar who played more shots in front of the wicket unlike his other innings in the tournament when he made majority of the runs on the leg side. Chasing Kolkata’s under par score of 155 for three, the home side got off to a terrific start with new comer Shikar Dhawan flaying Bond for three boundaries in the opening over. Ishant Sharma too leaked runs at the other end as Tendulkar struck six exquisite boundaries off the pacer in two overs. The early punches deflated the attack and the 50 was up in the sixth over.

Murali Kartik restored sanity when Ganguly plucked a brilliant catch to send back Dhawan. Kartik kept the batsmen in check with subtle variations in flight and pace but the bowler bloated his copy book when he failed to react and catch Tendulkar off his own bowling when the great man was on 41. That was the only blemish in Tendulkar’s fine innings.

Tiwary, started slowly, but opened up lofting Mathews for a six. He punished Gayle for two boundaries and looked to tear the attack to shreds when Ganguly rolled back years to take a blinder of a catch at short extra cover off Sharma. Ishant Sharma struck again when he caught Pollard plumb in front. But R Sathish played a cameo knock and home side won with nine balls to spare.

Earlier, Mumbai bowlers did well to restrict the visitors to 155 for three. The key to their success was the huge amount of the yorker length deliveries bowled by all the bowlers. Ganguly struggled with his timing and made a slow 31 off 34 balls which in this format of the game was not something he would have bargained for. Gayle was circumspect at the start and opened up only towards the end of his knock with trademark hits down the ground and the whip off the legs. But the damage was done when the visitors could not score a boundary off nearly six overs when Harbhajan slipped in four quiet overs and scalped the big wicket of Ganguly. Owasis Shah joined Gayleand induced some urgency into scoring. Gaylealso switched gears as Bravo was taken for 13 runs in his third over and Zaheer’s come back over went for 16 runs as Kolkata stepped up the pace. The last five overs of the Kolkata innings produced 53 runs but the charge came a bit late and as Ganguly admitted during the presentation ceremony his side was 10 to 15 runs short. But even that total would not have been enough considering the form Tendulkar was in today.