RANCHI–West In­dies off-spin­ner Sunil Nar­ine snatched four wick­ets to lead Kolkata Knight Rid­ers to an easy five-wick­et win over Chris Gayle's Roy­al Chal­lengers Ban­ga­lore in the In­di­an Pre­mier League here Sun­day.

The wily Trinida­di­an fin­ished with four for 22 off four out­stand­ing overs as Roy­al Chal­lengers were re­strict­ed to 115 for nine, af­ter be­ing put in on a slow pitch at the JS­CA In­ter­na­tion­al Sta­di­um Com­plex.

Gayle was Nar­ine's first scalp. Saurabh Ti­wary, Ravi Ram­paul and Ab­hi­manyu Mithun were the oth­er three which took the West In­di­an to the top of the wick­et-charts with 22 to his name. He tied Roy­al Chal­lengers up at the end of their in­nings, af­ter Bal­a­ji got rid of a threat­en­ing look­ing AB de Vil­liers.

Gayle gath­ered a pa­tient 33 from 36 balls to top score, while South Africa star AB de Vil­liers hit 28 from 22 balls.

Roy­al Chal­lengers reached 70 for two in the fourth over be­fore Nar­ine ripped apart the in­nings, claim­ing Gayle stumped off the first ball of his sec­ond over.

In re­ply, South Africa's Jacques Kallis top scored with 41 to steer the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons to vic­to­ry.

Pac­er Ram­paul fin­ished with one for 17 from four tight overs. Ram­paul gave them some hope when he had Man­vin­der Bis­la caught at point off the sec­ond ball. He should have ac­count­ed for Kallis too, but Mithun bad­ly mis­judged the catch at fine leg, run­ning in be­fore re­al­is­ing he had un­der­es­ti­mat­ed the strength of the shot.

Kolkata are sixth in the ta­ble on 12 points while RCB slipped to fourth on 16 points.

In Jaipur, Trinidad and To­ba­go's Kevon Coop­er and the Ra­jasthan Roy­als up­set fel­low coun­try­man Dwayne Bra­vo's ta­ble top­ping Chen­nai Su­per Kings by five wick­ets, to go sec­ond in the stand­ings.

Sent in, Chen­nai tal­lied 141 for four, get­ting 55 from open­er Mu­rali Vi­jay and 40 from part­ner Mike Hussey, in an open­ing stand of 83 off 69 balls, be­fore Bra­vo chipped in with a breezy un­beat­en 23 from 11 balls at the end,

Seam­er Coop­er fin­ished with two for 32 from his four overs.

In re­ply, the Roy­als reached their tar­get in the 18th over de­spite a top spell from Bar­ba­dos and West In­dies fast bowler Ja­son Hold­er who picked up two for 20 from four out­stand­ing overs.

Bra­vo, the new West In­dies one-day cap­tain, sent down three ex­pen­sive overs that cost 35 runs and yield­ed one wick­et.

Roy­als were lan­guish­ing at 19 for three in the fourth over and then 45 for four in the tenth be­fore Aus­tralia's Shane Wat­son ar­rived to play a blind­er, stroking 70 from 34 balls with six six­es and six fours in a 93-run, fifth wick­et stand with Roger Bin­ny (41).

Re­sults

Kolkata Knight Rid­ers 116 for 5 (Kallis 41, Vinay Ku­mar 2-17) beat Roy­al Chal­lengers Ban­ga­lore 115 for 9 (Gayle 33, Nar­ine 4-22) by five wick­ets

Ra­jasthan Roy­als 144 for 5 (Wat­son 70, Bin­ny 41*) beat Chen­nai Su­per Kings 141 for 4 (Vi­jay 55, Coop­er 2-32) by 5 wick­ets.?