IPL 2024: Venkatesh Iyer, Varun Chakravarthy fire KKR to playoffs with double over MI
KKR have become the first team to advance to the IPL 2024 playoffs.
Shreyas Iyer’s men defeated Hardik Pandya’s MI by 18 runs on Saturday, May 11 at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata and continued their dominating run in the tournament. It was also the third instance that the Knight Riders beat Mumbai both times in a single IPL edition, after 2014 and 2022.
After being asked to bat first in the rain-curtailed 16-over match, KKR got off to the worst possible start. Both their openers, Phil Salt and Sunil Narine, departed in the single digits. Narine got out in a bizarre manner after Jasprit Bumrah cleaned him up while he shouldered his arms. Soon after, Shreyas Iyer also bit the dust.
Venkatesh Iyer injected some momentum into the innings with a quickfire knock of 42 off 41, laced with 6 fours and 2 sixes. Nitish Rana, who replaced Angkrish Raghuvanshi, played his part with a handy 33-run knock before getting run out.
Andre Russell and Rinku Singh did their bit after scoring a brisk 24 and 20 respectively. In the end, it was Ramandeep Singh’s unbeaten 8-ball 17 that propelled the Knight Riders to 157 for 7. Piyush Chawla and Jasprit Bumrah stood out as the MI bowlers with 2 scalps apiece.
Hardik Pandya had a tough time with the ball after he finished with figures of 3-0-32-0. Anshul Kamboj, who made his debut against SRH, got the prized wicket of Shreyas.
MI struggle against in-form KKR bowlers
MI got off to a decent start in their run-chase after Ishan Kishan and Rohit Sharma put on 65 runs for the opening wicket off 6.5 overs. But between them, it was the left-handed Kishan, who dominated proceedings with a knock of 40 off 22 balls. Sunil Narine separated the duo after getting rid of Kishan, who was threatening to take the match away from KKR.
Rohit, at the other end, struggled to get going. He scored 19 runs off 24 balls before Varun Chakravarthy ended his misery in the middle. Suryakumar Yadav, who scored a masterful hundred against SRH, could not make an impact either. Russell accounted for his wicket after the MI batter huffed and puffed his way to 11 off 14 balls.
Hardik Pandya and Tim David got out within a blink of an eye as the required run-rate kept climbing at an alarming rate. Thereafter, Tilak Varma kept MI in hunt, but his 32-run knock off 17 balls could only take his team to 139 for 8. With MI needing 23 runs off the last over, Harshit Rana closed the match out by holding his nerves.