Date – Apr 26, 2009
Result – Kings XI Punjab won by 27 runs

Kings XI Punjab Innings
Kings XI Punjab won the toss and elected to bat first. But the decision proved to be disastrous as they lost four wickets for just 48 runs on board. Then it was K Sangakarra and Irfan Pathan who played sensible knocks and took the score pass 100.In the 18th over, Pathan fell to Khan and Kings XI Punjab were tottering at 123/5. Soon Sangakkara also lost his wicket and it was almost all over for Kings XI Punjab. At the end of 20 overs, Kings XI Punjab scored only 139/6 and now its upto the bowling department to save this match for them.

Rajasthan Royals Innings
A dismal batting performance by Rajasthan Royals or you can say a splendid bowling performance by Punjab helped them to win the match which was earlier considered to be a cake walk for Rajasthan Royals. The openers were back in pavilion with the team score of 9/2. The fall of wickets continued and Rajasthan Royals were 42/6 in the ninth over. Jadega and Warne tried to save the match but there heroics were not sufficient and they ended with 112/7 in alloted 20 overs.

Fall of wickets
Kings XI Punjab
K Goel (0-1, 0.1), R Bopara (21-2, 4.1), *Yuvraj Singh (38-3, 6.1), D Jayawardene (48-4, 8.2), I Pathan (123-5, 18.1), K Sangakarra (130-6, 19)

Rajasthan Royals
S Asnodkar (7-1, 1.1), G Smith (9-2, 1.5), R Quiney (23-3, 4.1), Mascarenhas (27-4, 4.3), Y Pathan (36-5, 6.4), A Raut (42-6, 8.4), R Jadeja (102-7, 18.1)

Man of the match: K Sangakarra

Date – 24 April 2009
In an encounter between Kings Punjab and Bangalore Royal Challengers, Preity Zinta’s man routed Mallaya’s Challengers and won the match comfortably by 7 wickets. Royal Challengers Bangalore won the toss and elected to bat and posted a good competitive total of 169 for winning the match. Kings XI opener gave them a solid start and Bopara scored 85 runs of just 59 balls. All batsmen of top order contributed and had strike rate equal to or greater than 100. In the end it was a cakewalk for Kings XI and they won the match in style by hitting 6 and reaching 173/3 in 19 overs.

Preity Zinta was seen very happy with the team performance.

Man of the match: R Bopara

Date – 21 April 2009

Kings XI Punjab match again interrupted by rain. This time their match was against Kolkata Knight Riders. Knight Riders won the toss and elected to field first. It was not the good start for Kings XI as Goel was out for a duck by pacer Sharma. After that Irfan Pathan was promoted up to order and he didn’t let the decision down by his performance. He scored 32 runs from 17 balls including 5 fours and 1 six. Skipper Yuvraj Singh played his natural game and hit 38 runs from 28 balls before he was  dismiss by M.Henriques. Mahela Jayawardena played a descent innings and scores 31 runs from 19 balls and put a total of 158/6 in 20 overs. In reply to this opener Chris Gayle shows no mercy to any Kings XI bowlers and with help of 4 sixes and 2 fours he was not out on 44 runs from 26 balls before rain interrupt the match. By D/L method Knight Riders were adjudged as winner as they win by 11 runs.

Man Of The Match – Chris Gayle

Playing XI –

KXIP – Karan Goel, Ravi Bopara, Yuvraj Singh (C), Kumar Sangakkara (W), Mahela Jayawardena, Irfan Pathan, Piyush Chawla, Taruwar Kohli, Vikramjeet Malik, VRV Singh, Yusuf Abdulla

KKR –

Date – 19 April 2009

Delhi DareDevils register an easy win over Kings XI Punjab in a rain affected match. Delhi DareDevils won the toss and elected to field first in a 12 over match. But decision taken by Sehwag to field first was not correct as the opening batsman of Kings XI Goel and Ravi Bopara got a good start. Goel scored 38 runs from 21 balls with three fours and three huge sixes and Bopara made 22 from 16 balls. After that Skipper Yuvraj hits two huge sixes and score 16 runs before he was run out. From Delhi DareDevils Daniel Vettori was successful bowler as he took three wickets for 15 runs in three overs. Kings XI put a score of 104 run in 12 overs. Chasing a revised target of 54 runs in 6 overs, Sehwag and Gambhir register an easy win with seven balls left. Sehwag hit 38 runs from just 16 balls.

Man Of The Match – Daniel Vettori

Playing XI –

KXIP – Taruwar Kohli, Karan Goel, Mahela Jayawardena, Kumar Sangakkara (W), Yuvraj Singh (C), Irfan Pathan, Ravi Bopara, Vikramjeet Malik, Piyush Chawla, VRV Singh, Yusuf Abdulla

DD – Virender Sehwag (C), Gautam Gambhir, Dinesh Karthik (W), AB de Villiers, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Manoj Tiwary, Avishkar Salvi, Daniel Vettori, Pradeep Sangwan, Yo Mahesh, Dirk Nannes

A South African businessman returned Rand 450,000 to Kings XI Punjab on recovering it in one of the hotel rooms.

In a good samaritan act, He returned the amount he recovered in one of the hotel rooms the IPL team occupied.

According to a report in ‘The Times’, Stephen Blewett, the chief of Altech Autopage Cellular, found a bundle of Rand 4,50,000 (nearly Rs 2.5 million) cash in his hotel room which later turned out to be Kings XI Punjab’s.

Blewett discovered the money in Rand 100 notes in his hotel room’s safe on Tuesday night after which he reported the matter to the hotel authorities.

It later emerged that Kings XI had left the money, which was their allowances for food, drinks and other expenses, in that room as they had been using it for team meetings ahead of their IPL campaign.

“It is not common for us to carry that amount of money but we have a lot of costs and the money was not yet distributed to the players,” the team’s liaison officer Arvinder Singh.
Source – espnstar.com