Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) reached their 4th final of the IPL after defeating Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) by 8 wickets. A one sided domination was seen in both the departments by the Men in Purple.
Sunrisers scored 159/10 in 18.3 overs and in reply Knight Riders posted 164/2 in 13.4 overs. Now the orange army will have to play the Qualifier 2 on Friday against the winner between RR and RCB.
In the group stage, these two teams met just once which was their first encounter in this season and Kolkata registered a close win with the help of Andre Russell’s all-round show.
After winning the toss, Hyderabad chooses to bat first.
The decision went wrong when their inform openers Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma departed at the score of 13 runs. Head got out on a duck while Abhishek managed only 3 runs. Then Rahul Tripathi got a crucial half-century with the bat as he scored 55 runs in 35 balls and it was also his first of the season.
In his knock he hit 7 fours and a six. He along with Heinrich Klaasen (32 runs) got a partnership of 62 runs and stabilized the wicket fall. Then in the end skipper Pat Cummins (30 runs) got some healthy runs with the bat.
Mitchell Starc once again provided his valuable experience after taking 3 early wickets at the start. Due to his brilliant bowling at the start, Knight Riders got the upper hand. He gave 34 runs in his 4 overs. Varun Chakaravarthy got 2 wickets while Harshit Rana, Sunil Narine, Vaibhav Arora and Andre Russell got 1 wicket each.
In the chase, Phil Salt’s absence was perfectly filled by Rahmanullah Gurbaz who scored 23 runs in 14 balls while his partner Sunil Narine got 31 runs in 16 balls.
Then the Iyer duo took the team to victory. Skipper Shreyas Iyer scored unbeaten 58 runs in 24 balls while Venkatesh Iyer scored unbeaten 51 runs in 28 balls. Both of the Iyer’s showed a huge power of destruction and got a winning partnership of 97 runs in just 44 balls for the 3rd wicket.
Pat Cummins and T Natarajan got 1 wicket each.