Kolkata Knight Riders beat Mumbai Indians by 18 runs in a rain-hit match. The former two-time IPL champions were the first to confirm their place in the playoffs.
Play started after two and a half hours in the rain at Eden Gardens. Four overs were reduced from two innings. Kolkata scored 157 runs for 7 wickets in 16 overs. In reply, Mumbai stopped at 139 runs for 8 wickets.
Batting first, Kolkata defeated Phil Salt and Sunil Narine in 7 balls. Narine has been called a record 44 times in T20, surpassing Alex Hales (43). Skipper Shreyas Iyer (7) could not catch up. He made a partnership of 30 runs with Venkatesh Iyer.
Venkatesh departed after adding 37 runs with Nitish Rana. His 42 off 21 balls with 6 fours and 2 sixes is Kolkata’s personal best.
Then Nitish Rana (33), Andre Russell (24) and Rinku Singh (20) contributed to the short but important innings to cross the 150. At the end, Ramandeep Singh was unbeaten with a cameo innings of 17 runs off 8 balls.
For Mumbai, Yashpreet Bumrah and Piyush Chawla took two wickets each.
Mumbai got off to a good start. The opening pair of Ishan Kishan and Rohit Sharma broke after 65 runs in 6.5 overs. Ishan left the field with 40 runs off 22 balls with 5 fours and 2 sixes.
After that no batter could stand like that. However, Naman Dhir and Tilak Verma continued to fight.
Mumbai needed 41 runs in the last two overs. In the penultimate over from Andre Russell, Naman collected 19 runs with two sixes and a four. 22 runs were needed in the last over. Harshit Rana dismissed Naman and Tilak to prevent Mumbai from succeeding.
Tilak could not play a role in the team’s victory despite maintaining the consistency of performance by scoring 32 runs in 17 balls with 5 fours and 1 six.
Harshit, Varun Chakraborty and Russell took two wickets each for Kolkata.
Kolkata is going to finish the league as one of the top two teams if nothing major happens. They are at the top with 18 points in 12 matches.
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