(ESPNCRICINFO) – Having just hosted a run-fest where 262 was chased down with eight balls to spare, Eden Gardens reverted to a former template familiar to fans of its home team, and Kolkata Knight Riders returned to winning ways and moved to second place on the IPL table with a confident, net-run-rate-boosting seven-wicket victory over Delhi Capitals.

After a succession of flat pitches, Eden served up one with a little bit of grip, and KKR’s bowlers made full use of it after Capitals chose to bat first. Mitchell Starc and Vaibhav Arora took three wickets inside the powerplay, after which the spinners took over, with Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine combining for figures of 8-0-40-4. Reduced to 111 for 8 at one stage, Capitals set KKR a 150-plus target thanks to an unlikely, unbeaten 26-ball 35 from Kuldeep Yadav.

With Kuldeep and Axar Patel in their attack, Capitals had the tools to create a bit of pressure on this pitch, but KKR were well on their way to victory before either spinner had bowled a ball. Phil Salt made his fourth fifty in five home games this season, dominating a powerplay in which KKR rushed to 79 for no loss.

Axar Patel removed both KKR openers when he came on, but it was too little, too late for Capitals, as Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer put on an unbroken 57 off 43 balls to end the match with 21 balls remaining.
KKR now have 12 points from nine games, and a NRR of 1.096, the best of any team in the competition.

Starc vs Fraser-McGurk, a glimpse of the future
Jake Fraser-McGurk faced just seven balls on Monday night, and five of the seven were attempted yorkers, two of which ended up as full-tosses. The other two were banged into a hard length. The bulk of these balls were from Mitchell Starc, but Vaibhav Arora also stuck to the same plan with his two balls.

This wasn’t two fast bowlers searching for swing from a fullish good length with the new ball. This was death bowling inside the powerplay, and as T20 batting leans more and more towards all-out attack, it’s likely we’ll see a lot more of it in the future.
On the day, Fraser-McGurk hit a four and a six and picked out deep square leg while looking to flick Starc for another six.

By then, Capitals had already lost Prithvi Shaw, who had begun ominously with three fours off Starc, off the first three balls of the match. He had fallen in innocuous manner, strangling Arora down the leg side.
Arora took one more wicket, delivering a peach that straightened off the deck to hit the top of Shai Hope’s off stump. That ball suggested the ball would grip for the spinners too, and so it proved.