Mohali, May 23: Openers Kumar Sangakkara and Shaun Marsh guided Kings XI Punjab to a comfortable six wicket win over the Deccan Chargers in the Indian Premier League T20 match at the PCA Stadium here on Friday.

Mahela Jayawardene (14) and Piyush Chawla (16) played some dazzling strokes at the death after their side lost wickets in the middle before clinching their fourth consecutive victory.

The Mohali side though, took 19.3 overs to finish off their work.

For the Chargers, spinner Pragyan Ojha took 2/30, while Rohit Sharma and Scott Styris had one wicket each. R.P. Singh who was the highest wicket taker till the last match couldn’t do much on Friday.

Chasing a competitive 176, Kings XI Punjab started off with a bang with the team’s hundred coming off just 9.4 overs as compared to Chargers 13.3 overs. The Punjab side were happy with the return of Kumar Sangakkara, who raced off to his fifty in just 23 balls hitting seven boundaries and a six. Before his return he ensured that his team was well on track for a comfortable win.

He along with Shaun Marsh produced 84 runs for the first wicket, hammering the Deccan bowlers all around the ground with the slogan Ek do teen chaar, Ek chouka aur maar doing the rounds in the stadium.

Marsh continued with his textbook style batting. He reached his 50 in 40 balls with three fours and two sixes.

Marsh’s strikes were clean and he looked set for a bigger innings but could not clear the long on boundary to hand over his wicket to Gibbs off Styris.

Sangakkara fell to Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh made 17, Luke Pomersbach contributed 13 before Jayawardene and Chawla finished it off.

Earlier, Deccan Chargers ran up 175/4 with notable contributions from stand-in skipper Adam Gilchrist, Herschelle Gibbs and Sharma.

The team tried to beef up their batting order with Gibbs, Scott Styris and Sanjay Bangar replacing Halhadar Das, Shahid Afridi and Nuwan Zoysa.

Openers Gilchrist and Gibbs strung together a 79-run partnership as the Punjab bowling was toothless minus Irfan Pathan. The fielding too looked weak and some easy catches went down.

Gilly took time to come into his own, but Gibbs was quick to take on the bowlers with his swashbuckling strokes including a hattrick of boundaries off Sreesanth and three sixes in his 44.

It was Gibbs’ highest IPL score and he looked very relaxed while playing the spinners before being castled by a low delivery from Gagandeep Singh.

Rohit Sharma showed why he was still the Chargers’ most consistent performer with a 26-ball 50, lighting up Mohali with some huge sixes.

Yet Sharma was to throw it away yet again with a needlessly risky flip shot off a full length VRV delivery that knocked over his stumps.

Though Gilchrist got to his second 50 of the tournament, he could not carry on and was deceived by offspinner Ramesh Powar. Gilchrist hit six fours and a six in his 42-ball innings.

Powar, VRV, S. Sreesanth and Gagandeep took a wicket each, though the in-form Piyush Chawla was unable to make dent the Deccan defence.