Kolkata Knight Riders stormed into the Indian Premier League’s grand finale with a dominating win over inconsistent Sunrisers Hyderabad at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium on Tuesday. This was the fourth time that KKR qualified for the tournament’s final match. They have won the trophy twice – in 2012 and 2014. Interestingly, the won their maiden championship title at MA Chidambaram Stadium in 2012. Shortly after the Motera victory, KKR’s official X handle posted a photo with a tagline – “27th May 2012 | 26th May 2024 – Chepauk Calling – 12 years apart.’
During the after-match presentation, KKR’s Venkatesh Iyer, who smashed an unbeaten knock of 51 off 28, said, “Credit to our bowlers. In a tournament like this, momentum is important. We’ve seen that with RCB, we wanted that and have been playing good cricket. We didn’t get to play the last game but were table-toppers, that gave us confidence.” Iyer also mentioned how Shah Rukh Khan, KKR’s owner, guided the team.
“Owners have been great, SRK gave a pep talk. Were pumped to go out and put up a good show.” As KKR’s theme song – lorbo, korbo, jeetbo was played at Motera – Shah Rukh Khan was seen going on a victory lap with his children as they greeted the spectators.’
On the other hand, Pat Cummins, the losing captain spoke about getting another chance. They will meet the winner of Eliminator (RR vs RCB) in Qualifier 2. “Try to put this day behind quickly, good thing we have another crack at it. We were off the pace. You have these days in T20 cricket, when it doesn’t work out,” the SRH skipper said.
SRH vs KKR, Qualifier 1: Name is Starc, Mitch Starc!
A lot has been written about how KKR ‘wasted’ their top money on buying Mitch Starc at IPL 2024 Auction. His bowling figures really never matched the kind of money – Rs 24.75 crore to be precise – that this team spent on the Aussie star. But Tuesday was different. In this high-stake match where it was a simple case of now or never, Starc delivered and how! Picking up three wickets in three overs of the powerplay, Starc destroyed SRH’s top order. SRH skipper’s bet over his strikers went horribly wrong as players such as Travis Head (0), Abhishek Sharma (3), Nitish Kumar Reddy (9), Shahbaz Ahmed (0) couldn’t do much in front of Star and KKR spinners. It was only the fifth wicket between Rahul Tripathi and Heinrich Klaasen that brought SRH to a triple-digit score.
SRH vs KKR, Qualifier 1: Kolkata’s juggernaut
In reply, though SRH did get a wicket or two, but the dominating KKR never let them back in the game. After dismissal of Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer and captain Shreyas Iyer smashed unbeaten fifties Kolkata chased down the target of 159 with 38 balls remaining.