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Kolkata Knight Riders thrashed Rajasthan Royals at Eden Gardens with 6.1 overs to spare as they topped the points table perhaps for the first time in IPL history. After the consecutive wins in the last two matches, it was hardly a surprise that Eden Gardens was almost suddenly filled up today after the low attendance in the previous matches which many felt was due to the “Dada effect”. Kolkata Knight Riders captain Gautam Gambhir won the toss and put Rajasthan Royals to bat. An awesome bowling and fielding display by KKR players and a pathetic batting display by Royals made the RR fold up in just 81 runs all out in 15.2 overs. Lakshmipathy Balaji (3 wickets for 15 runs) and Shakib Al Hassan (2 wickets for 21 runs) were the pick of the bowlers for KKR. In reply, KKR lost a couple of early wickets but KKR skipper Gautam Gambhir (35 runs off 35 balls) and Manoj Tiwary (30 runs off 26 balls) played steady knocks as Kolkata Knight Riders reached 85/2 in just 13.5 overs. Balaji was awarded Man of the Match for his brilliant bowling.

Kolkata Knight Riders defeated Rajasthan Royals convincingly at their home fortress Jaipur with 9 balls to spare. Kolkata Knight Riders captain Gautam Gambhir won the toss and put Rajasthan Royals into bat. Both the teams got more class coming into the team as Aussie pacer Brett Lee and Bangladesh captain and all rounder Shakib-Al-Hasan joined the KKR team while Aussie all rounder Shane Watson joined the Royals. However, Rajasthan Royals did not open with Watson which was quite amazing as he is a regular opener and was in current form recently including his 16 sixes in a match of the Aussie-Bangla ODI series. Rahul Dravid (35 runs off 34 balls), Ashok Menaria (27 runs off 21 balls), Ross Taylor (35 runs off 25 balls) and Shane Watson (22 runs off 13 balls) contributed as Rajasthan Royals reached a competitive total of 159/4 in their 20 overs. Shakib and Yusuf Pathan took two wickets each for KKR. Kolkata Knight Riders in reply cruised to 160 in just 18.3 overs losing just 1 wicket as Jacques Kallis (80 runs off 65 balls) and Gautam Gambhir (75 runs off 44 balls) thrashed the Rajasthan bowlers. Gambhir was also awarded the Man of the Match for his knock.

Chennai Super Kings beat Kolkata Knight Riders in a closely fought opening match of IPL 2011 Season 4. The match went to the wire but it was Captain Cool Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his team which kept cool and emerged as winners. Dhoni won the toss and decided to bat. Anirudha Srikkanth opened the batting with Vijay for Chennai while Iqbal Abdulla opened the batting for Kolkata Knight Riders. Abdulla got Vijay in the first over but then KKR were terrible in the field and Yusuf Pathan dropped two catches while Morgan dropped one. Anirudha Srikkanth scored 64 runs off 55 balls while Raina, Dhoni and Morkel contributed with scores of 33(29 balls), 29(21 balls) and 15(9 balls) respectively as CSK scored 153/4 in 20 overs. Kallis scalped 2 wickets for KKR while Abdulla and Yusuf Pathan chipped in with 1 wicket each. Kolkata started very steadily in reply and got a brilliant opening partnership of 64 runs for the opening wicket. After Manvinder Bisla fell in the 9th over, Pathan came in but was also run out on 11 runs with a brilliant throw by Dhoni. Kallis held one end and scored 54 runs off 42 balls but wickets kept falling at regular intervals and KKR could never get any partnership get going. Gautam Gambhir came in at no.6 which was a bit of a surprise but he also could not do much as KKR continued to struggle. Manoj Tiwary hit two consecutive sixes in the 19th over and made it only 9 runs to win from 8 balls. But then he fell at 27 runs off 15 balls and nobody could score the required runs and Chennai Super Kings finally won by 2 runs as KKR could only score 151/7 in their 20 overs. Anirudha Srikkanth was adjudged the man of the match for his match winning knock for CSK. It was interesting match and a fitting opener for IPL T20 Season 4.

All the 10 teams participating in IPL 2011 Season 4 including the two new entrants Sahara Pune Warriors and Kochi Tuskers Kerala have announced their final list of players in their respective teams. Out of the teams, Sahara Pune Warriors is the only team to have registered their full quota of 30 players in the squad. Delhi Daredevils were also close behind with 29 players while Kochi Tuskers Kerala, Deccan Chargers and Rajasthan Royals named 27 players each in their final squads. Royal Challengers Bangalore listed 25 players and Kings XI Punjab 23 players. Kolkata Knight Riders named the least number of players amongst all the franchisees as they went ahead with only 20 players including 7 foreign players.

In terms of spending, Mumbai Indians were left with only $1739 from their $9 million purse after all their player purchases. Rajasthan Royals were the only franchisee to exhaust their full purse while Deccan Chargers had the maximum amount left of $1.49 million after their player purchases followed by KXIP who had $1.46 million (approx) left.

Here are the full squads of the various IPL teams for IPL 4:

Chennai Super Kings (24): Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Suresh Raina, Murali Vijay, Wriddhiman Saha, Ravichandran Ashwin, Subramanium Badrinath, Joginder Sharma, Sudeep Tyagi, Abhinav Mukund, Aniruddha Shrikant, Ganapathi Vignesh, K Vasudevdas, Shadb Jakati, Vijaykumar Yomahesh, (Foreign) Albie Morkel, Michael Hussey, Dwayne Bravo, Doug Bollinger, Scott Styris, Ben Hilfenhaus, Nuwan Kulasekera, Suraj Randiv, George Bailey, Faf du Plessis

Mumbai Indians (23): Sachin Tendulkar, Harbhajan Singh, Rohit Sharma, Munaf Patel, Abu Nechim Ahmed, Aditya Tare, Ali Murtuza, Ambati Rayudu, Dhawal Kulkarni, Pawan Suyal, Rajagopal Sathish, Surul Kanwar, Surya Kumar Yadav, T Suman, Yazvendra Singh Chahal (Foreign) Kieron Pollard, Lasith Malinga, Andrew Symonds, Davy Jacobs, James FRanklin, Moises Henriques, Alden Blizzard, Dilhara Fernando

Kolkata Knight Riders (20): Gautam Gambhir, Yusuf Pathan, Manoj Tiwary, Lakshmipathy Balaji, Jaidev Unadkat, Iqbal Abdulla, Laxmi Ratan Shukla, Manvinder Singh Bisla, Pradeep Sangwan, Rajat Bhatia, Sarabjit Ladda, Shami Ahmed, Shreevats Goswami (Foreign) Jacques Kallis, Brad Haddin, Shakib Al Hassan, Brett Lee, Eoin Morgan, Ryan ten Doeschate, James Pattinson.

Sahara Pune Warriors (30): Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa, Ashish Nehra, Murali Kartik, Abhishek Jhunjhunwala, Bhuvenshwar Kumar, Dheeraj Jadhav, Ekalavya Dwivedi, Ganesh Gaikwad, Harpreet Singh Bhatia, Harshad Khadiwale, Kamran Khan, Manish Pandey, Mithun Manhas, Mohnish MIshra, Rahul Sharma, Sachin Rana, Shrikant Wagh, Shrikant Mundhe, Imtiyaz Ahmed (Foreign) Graeme Smith, Tim Paine, Angelo Mathews, Nathan McCullum, Callum Ferguson, Wayne Parnell, Mitchell Marsh, Jerome Taylor, Alfonso Thomas, Jesse Ryder

Kochi Tuskers Kerala (27): VVS Laxman, S Sreesanth, RP Singh, Parthiv Patel, Ravindra Jadeja, Ramesh Powar, R Vinay Kumar, B Akhil, Chandan Madan, Deepak Chowghule, Kedar Jadhav, Raiphi Gomez, Sushant Marathe, Tanmay Srivastava, Y Gnanswara Rao, Yashpal Singh, Prashant Padmanabahan, (Foreign) Mahela Jayawardene, Brendon McCullum, Steven Smith, Muttiah Muralitharan, Brad Hodge, Thisara Perera, Steve O’Keefe, Owais Shah, Michael Klinger, John Hastings

Royal Challengers Bangalore (25): Virat Kohli, Zaheer Khan, Saurabh Tiwary, Cheteshwar Pujara, Abhimanyu Mithun, Mohammed Kaif, Arun Karthik, CM Gautham, Abrar Kazi, Mayank Agarwal, Bharath Narayan, Raju Bhatkal, Sreenath Aravind, Ryan Ninan, Asad Khan Pathan, (Foreign) Tillekratne Dilshan, AB de Villiers, Daniel Vettori, Dirk Nannes, Charl Langeveldt, LUke Pomersbach, Johan van der Wath, Rilee Rossouw, Nuwan Pradeep, Jonathan Vandiar

Rajasthan Royals (27): Rahul Dravid, Pankaj Singh, Aakash Chopra, Abhishek Raut, Aditya Dole, Ajinkya Rahane, Amit Paunikar, Ashok Menaria, Deepak Chahar, Dishant Yagnik, Faiz Fazal, Nayan Doshi, Pinal Shah, Samad Fallah, Siddharth Trivedi, Stuart Binny, Amit Singh, Dinesh Salunkhe, Swapnil Asnodkar, Sumit Narwal, Ankeet Chavan (Foreign) Shane Warne, Shane Watson, Ross Taylor, Johan BOtha, Paul Collingwood, Shaun Tait

Deccan Chargers (27): Shikhar Dhawan, Ishant Sharma, Pragyan Ojha, Amit Mishra, Manpreet Gony, Akash Bhandari, Anand Rajan, Ankit Nagendra, Arjun Yadav, Ashish Reddy, Bharat Chipli, DB Ravi Teja, Harmeet Singh Bansal, Ishank Jaggi, Ishan Malhotra, Jaydev Shah, Kedar Devdhar, Sunny Sohal (Foreign) Kevin Pietersen, Cameron White, Kumar Sangakkara, JP Duminy, Dale Steyn, Daniel Christian, Chris Lynn, Juan Theron, Michael Lumb

Kings XI Punjab (23): Dinesh Karthik, Abhishek Nayar, Praveen Kumar, Piyush Chawla, Bhargav Bhatt, Bipul Sharma, Love Ablish, Mandeep Singh, Nitin Saini, Paras Dogra, Paul Valthaty, Shalabh Srivastava, Siddharth Chitnis, Sunny Singh, Vikramjeet Malik, Amit Yadav (Foreign) Adam Gilchrist, Shaun Marsh, David Hussey, Stuart Broad, Ryan Harris, Dimitri Masceranhas, Nathan Remington.

Delhi Daredevils (29): Virender Sehwag, Irfan Pathan, Naman Ojha, Ajit Agarkar, Ashok Dinda, Umesh Yadav, Venugopal Rao, Aavishkar Salvi, Prashant Naik, Rajesh Pawar, Robin Bist, S Sriram, Tejashwi Yadav, Unmukt Chand, Varun Aaron, Vikash Mishra, Vivek Yadav, Yogesh Nagar, Shahbaz Nadeem (Foreign) David Warner, James Hopes, Morne Morkel, Aaron Finch, Mathew Wade, Roloef van der Merwe, Andrew McDonald, Travis Birt, Collin Ingram, Robert Frylinck.