It’s official! Kolkata Knight Riders have become the first team to qualify for Tata IPL 2024 playoffs. Those two decisive points came after KKR successfully defended their citadel at Eden Gardens and defeated Mumbai Indians by 18 runs. This is the first time in the last three seasons that KKR have qualified for the playoffs.
In the last two seasons – 2022 and 2023 – they crashed out of the race and finished at seventh spot. Cut to 2024, under the charismatic leadership of mentor Gautam Gambhir, KKR are the table-toppers with 18 points in their kitty. They have a Net Run Rate of +1.428. They have the second best powerplay run rate in this season of IPL. At 11.09, KKR’s openers – Phil Salt and Sunil Narine smashed some explosive innings against the opponents.
In the Saturday showdown, the match was reduced to 16 overs a side due to rain. MI decided to field first after winning the toss. They restricted KKR to 157/7. Venkatesh Iyer (42) was the highest-scorer for the home side. In reply, MI did start well. But once KKR brought in their spinners, the visitors had no answer. MI kept losing wickets at an alarming rate and KKR won the match by 18 runs. Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy and Andre Russell picked up two wickets each. Mitch Starc didn’t get any wicket but he didn’t concede many runs either. In his two overs, he conceded 11 runs.
For Mumbai, this was a match of just redeeming some pride because they have already been eliminated from the tournament. Many have also sounded an alarm about Rohit Sharma’s poor form. He will be leading India in the T20 World Cup next month. In 13 innings that he played for MI in this season, he scored 50+ runs only once. Meanwhile, Jasprit Bumrah became the Purple Cap leader. Harshal Patel of Punjab Kings held the title of most wicket-taker briefly.