Match Details
Arya- Earlier in the day it was KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer who won the toss and opted to bat. It was a must-win game for both the teams, more so for KKR who would have been knocked out had they lost the match. KKR needed a good start to set things rolling but it wasn’t to be as Venkatesh Iyer who batted superbly in the previous encounter was Marco Jansen’s first victim. He ended up chopping a back of a length delivery outside off straight onto his stumps.
From there on, it was Nitish Rana and Ajinkya Rahane who provided the much-needed impetus in the powerplay. Rahane started off with a brilliant pick up six and Rana later joined in the act. He took Natarajan apart in his first over and helped KKR consolidate the powerplay. However the introduction of thunderbolt specialist Umran Malik again broke open the KKR middle-order.
He bagged the wickets of Nitish Rana and Rahane in his very first over and all of a sudden, KKR needed to rebuild through their captain Shreyas Iyer and Sam Billings. Umran Malik again accounted Shreyas Iyer for the 2nd time in the tournament in as many matches. The KKR skipper ended up chipping on fullish leg-side delivery straight down the throat of the deep square leg fielder.
Sam Billings chipped in with a few useful blows to begin with but also lost Rinku Singh at the other end. It was now or never for the Knight Riders and it was when the man of the hour Andre Russell arrived in the middle. Russell kept finding the boundaries and was well supported by Billings. A 29 balls 34 steadied the ship in the middle before he was dismissed by Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
SRH bowlers would have been very happy with the bowling performance till the 19th over. However SRH skipper Kane Williamson did miss a trick by keeping Washington Sundar for the final over of the innings. He ended up bowling three full-toss and all three of them were deposited for maximums as KKR finished with a marginally more than par score of 177 runs. Umran Malik was the pick of the bowlers bagging three.