Jofra Archer struck the first ball of the second innings to equal Mohammed Shami’s record in the match. rajasthan royalsThe IPL 2026 begins against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Eden Gardens on Sunday.Archer, bowling for Rajasthan Royals, bowled a golden duck to KKR opener Tim Seifert in the first innings of KKR’s innings. With this, Archer now has 5 wickets on the first ball of an IPL innings, equaling Shami’s record.He also took wickets in the opening innings of RR’s first two games (against Royal Challengers Bangalore on April 10 and Sunrisers Hyderabad on April 13), dismissing Phil Salt and Abhishek Sharma respectively.First-ball wickets in IPL innings (most):
- 5 – Mohammad Shami
- 5 – Jofra Archer
Earlier, after winning the coin toss, Rajasthan Royals elected to bat. Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine combined to take 5 wickets and restricted RR to 155 for 9 wickets.Things could have been worse for RR if KKR had not backed down in the power struggle.Rajasthan started strongly and reached 63 runs without conceding in a pace attack with Yashasvi Jaiswal and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi scoring over 10 runs per over.The game changed when spin was introduced. Soriyavanshi hit Narine for six off the second ball, but Narine followed with five. Chakravarthy then dismissed Sooryavanshi off his fourth ball to take his 200th T20 wicket. The batsman was caught by Ramandeep Singh at deep mid-wicket.Rajasthan Royals slipped from a strong position to 118 runs in 15 overs, with the run rate falling below 8.
