After 10 years of wait, Bollywood star SRK’s Kolkata Knight Riders finally managed to win their third title in the Indian Premier League (IPL) history. On Sunday evening’s one-sided match, KKR beat Sunrisers Hyderabad by 8 wickets and with 57 balls in hand while chasing a target of 114 runs at Chennai’s MA Chidambaram Stadium.
Winning the toss, Pat Cummins, the captain of SRH, decided to set the target. However, they were bogged down at the beginning after the collapse of 4 top-order batters during power play. KKR’s top-notch bowling lineup comprising of names like Michell Starc, Nunil Narine and Andre Russell played a crucial role in limiting the run-tally while taking regular wickets. Russell took 3 wickets – highest from his side this evening while spending 19 runs off 2.3 overs. Starc got 2 important wickets of Abhishek Sharma and Rahul Tripathi will giving away just 14 runs from his 3 overs. Narine completed his spell with a figure of 4-0-16-1. Local starts like Harshit Rana (4-1-24-2), Vaibhav Arora (3-0-24-1) and Varun Chakravarthy (2-0-9-1) did their respective duty duly as well.
On the other hand for SRH, skipper Cummins and Protean star Aiden Markram were only two batters to touch the 20s. Pat scored 24 off 19 deliveries and struck one of two sixes from his side during this match before getting caught in the hands of his compatriot Starc while playing Russell. Markam was also dismissed by the same pair before adding 20 off 23 deliveries to the team total.
SRH bowler weren’t comfortable either. KKR batters were in a mood of hammering the bowlers from the beginning. Although West Indian ace Narine had to return to the pavilion on the second ball of the second over after smashing SHR skipper for a six. Subsequently, Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Venkatesh Iyer cemented the rode to the victory with a 91 runs partnership off 45 balls during the second wicket. When Gurbaz was trapped by Shahbaz for a LBW, his team required merely 12 runs. VK Iyer completed his 50 within no time and guided his team to their 3rd ever title in the most glamorous franchise cricket league.
KKR is the third successful team in IPL after Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians. Both CSK and MI have 5 titles each. Intriguingly, no player from India’s 2024 T20 World Cup squad was present in today’s match. Only Rinku Singh from the champion KKR’s side is in the reserve list. SRH scored the lowest ever IPL final total in the history while also setting the highest ever score of 287/3 during this edition against RCB.
