Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) defeated Mumbai Indians (MI) by 18 runs at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Saturday, becoming the first team to qualify for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 playoffs. The last time KKR had done the double over MI was back in 2014, the season in which they clinched their second IPL trophy. MI are already out of the tournament.
Black clouds had been building over the City of Joy from the morning and with the game time approaching, the rain gods finally decided to pour down. When the dark cloud subsided, albeit after an hour-and-a-half delay, Hardik Pandya called the toss of the coin correctly and opted to bowl first.
In seaming conditions, MI removed the KKR openers. A peach of a delivery from Jasprit Bumrah bamboozled Sunil Narine as he ended up leaving an in-swinging yorker. Phil Salt had earlier top-edged Nuwan Thushara.
Venkatesh Iyer walked out and took charge of the innings immediately. He scored 42 crucial runs, with the help of six fours and two sixes but fell to the first ball of spin in the game.
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After a 37-run stand with Nitish Rana, who was a bit slow to get off the blocks, another 39-run partnership with Andre Russell. steadied the ship for KKR.
Rana survived a LBW call off the bowling of Bumrah but a sharp throw from Tilak Varma meant found him to be out of his ground. Russell hit a few into the crowd but was outfoxed by Piyush Chawla soon after.
Rinku Singh and Ramandeep Singh combined well with cameos of 20 and 17 respectively helped KK post 157.
In the chase, MI’s Rohit Sharma and Ishan Kishan got off to a blistering start thanks to some wayward bowling from Vaibhav Arora and Mitchell Starc. Harshit Rana too was no better, forcing Shreyas to turn to Narine inside the powerplay.
Ishan and Rohit brought up the 50-run even before the last ball of the fifth over.
Varun Chakaravarthy did get Rohit Sharma trapped in front of the wickets but the umpire deemed it to be not out. DRS reviews suggested the ball would have missed the stumps owing to height. Narine though did manage to break the opening stand, sending back a dangerous-looking Ishan for a well-made 22-ball 40.
Rohit’s sluggish knock came to an end in the next over as Chakaravarthy finally got his man with Narine completing the catch. Russell got his name in the wickets column too as Suryakumar Yadav fed Ramandeep at deep square. The best T20 batter in the world was struggling in the middle, with a poor strike-rate of almost 79.
That brought MI skipper Hardik out to bat. The equation is 70 of the last five. Shreyas trusted Chakaravarthy to get a fourth over and he repaid the faith shown by his captain by removing the opponent skipper.
Russell sent back Tim David for a duck on the first ball of the 13th over as the crowd roared back to life. The equation for MI came down to 57 runs from the last three overs.
Tilak Varma played some innovative shots to give his side hope but Nehal Wadhera was found short as he took Starc in the deep. The Aussie pacer’s bullet throw emerged as the winner in that race. The equation, 41 runs from 12 balls.
Naman Dhir smashed Russell for two sixes and a four in the 19th to get the equation down to 22 runs from the last over.
Harshit took the ball and sent back Naman as Rinku took a composed catch deep mid-wicket. On the third ball, he sent back Tilak as Salt took a smart catch.
Harshit closed out his over for KKR to a well-fought 18-run win.
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