Hello and a warm welcome to yet another blog on the daily match reviews on this year’s IPL. Today the Kolkata Knight Riders locked horns with the Mumbai Indians at the iconic Eden Gardens, which ended up being another thriller at this incredible venue. So let’s get started!
Before Hardik won the toss and opted to field, the rain poured at Kolkata, forcing a shortened 16-over game. KKR were not off to a flyer similar to the reverse fixture between these two teams as their openers departed by the second over but again Venky Iyer stood up and Nitish Rana gave him good company. But the MI bowlers were superb and some cameos from Russell, Rinku and Ramandeep got KKR a par total of 157 in their 16 overs. MI’s openers surprisingly were off to a flyer and they easily got 59 in the powerplay (5 overs, since it is a shortened game). But then came Narine who got the important wicket of Kishan followed by Chakaravarthy, as they gave nothing to offer for the MI batters, who constantly kept throwing their wickets away. There were some hopes for them in the end with Tilak and Naman batting well, but they were comfortably short, giving KKR a brilliant comeback win by 18 runs AND ARE OFFICIALLY THE FIRST TEAM IN THE PLAYOFFS!
In another masterclass by the KKR bowlers at their fortress, once again the batting was poor by both teams but the difference was the KKR middle-order batters played short but useful cameos but for MI it was just Kishan and Rohit who gave the start and no one capitalised on it. But the most important difference was the KKR bowlers were able to completely choke down the scoring rate and credit for this goes to Chakaravarthy who was absolutely fantastic and has had some good matches recently after a very poor start to the season and his performance deserves to be on this blog’s title. But things became a little nervy when the equation came down to 22 off the last 6 balls and credit to Shreyas for reserving his last over specialist, Harshit Rana who also has been mentioned along with Chakaravarthy in the title because he went with pace on first delivery, foxing Naman who was expecting a cutter and smartly bowled a bouncer away for Tilak’s body and since he had to slog, he was edged and taken by Salt as calmly he delivered the win to his captain. And also a special mention to the other Rana, Nitish, who played a superb hand along with Venky to give some stability to an unstable innings as they lost 3 wickets in quick succession, one among them was their captain. So overall, an average game by both teams in terms of batting but KKR’s bowlers picked up wickets and shot down the run rate, unlike their counterparts, giving MI’s miserable campaign a 9th loss.
So that’s it for today and this match didn’t impact the chances of the other 7 teams in the playoff race. But tomorrow is the most important day in the race as CSK take on RR at Chepauk and RCB take on DC at the Chinnaswamy. Two very very important games as these games will have a huge impact on the playoff race. So see you on that and have a great day ahead!