Kolkata Knight Riders 167 with everything (Tripathi 81, Bravo 3-37) Super Kings of Chennai 157 of 5 (Watson 50, Russell 1-18) for 10 runs
An intensely tactical battle between the Kolkata Knight Riders and the Chennai Super Kings ended with the Knight Riders triumphant by ten runs, with both teams dominating the first half of their batting innings, only for the opposition to roar back. Ultimately, the return of the Knight Riders surpassed that of the Super Kings.
That came down largely to Rahul Tripathi’s excellent 81 of 51 at the top of the Knight Riders order. Back at his favorite opening spot, Tripathi was quick on the power play, then led the innings with his bat when the long-awaited star-studded middle order fireworks failed to materialize. Shane Watson hit a fifty in the chase of the Super Kings, but only one other hitter crossed the 25. That’s not because this was a bowling pitch, though it certainly wasn’t a hitting beauty, but because the players on both sides they executed their plans with precision.
The Knight Riders went 93-for-2 after ten overs after opting to hit first, but the Super Kings held them at 167 when they appeared to be above 190. The Super Kings in turn were 99-for-1 in 12 overs and in control. cruising. But Dinesh Karthik had held Sunil Narine entirely to death, and the Super Kings stumbled upon a bowler who has not only been among the greats of the T20, but has been particularly thorny for most of the hitters of the Super Kings. Narine bowled 12, 14, 16 and 19, while Andre Russell also held exclusively to the death, pitching 18 and 20 as the Knight Riders cut off the batters’ supply of runs. An order rate that was comfortable began to rise, and the combined pressure from the bowlers and the score ultimately proved too much for the Super Kings’ average order.
Tripathi as starter, Narine at No. 4
Narine’s failures at the top of the order had come against fast players who could spike the ball and cause it to rise uncomfortably. The Super Kings didn’t have that kind of bowler hat, but the Knight Riders decided to move Narine down the order anyway, pushing Tripathi up. Tripathi’s best IPL performances also came as a starter, and he proved the promotion was sensible. He didn’t try to hit the ball at first, hitting the line most of the time and getting good returns. At the end of the power play, he was 31 of 18, having kept the Knight Riders’ running rate healthy despite Shubman Gill and Nitish Rana scoring less than one run per ball.
Tripathi was particularly severe when players threw too short or too full, which they did quite frequently. Narine himself entered number 4, being used tactically as a float. The move worked, with the southpaw hitting 17 of nine balls, injecting momentum when the game was ready and allowing enough time for Eoin Morgan and Andre Russell to capitalize on the death; that, however, did not come.
The Super Kings strike back
Karn Sharma, in the XI ahead of Piyush Chawla, cast his full quota on a spell after entering when the power play ended, and did significant work to control the Knight Riders. He collected 2 of 25 despite doing 12 runs his first time, and he fired Rana and Narine. The latter dropped in a magnificent one-two act on the long boundary, Ravindra Jadeja ran to his right from midfield and grabbed the ball as he dived to its full length, but threw it towards Faf du Plessis before he connected it. .
Sam Curran, Dwayne Bravo and Shardul Thakur then pitched excellently as the Knight Riders’ batting fell apart. In the first ten overs, everything had gone according to plan and everything was set for a grandstand finale. Instead, the Super Kings closers found the area of good length, causing the ball to stick, denying hitters room to swing back or pace to go over.
Morgan got a sharp bouncer behind Curran and Russell came out in a similar fashion to Thakur, although the ball wasn’t that short. Tripathi looked tired, but not so tired as not to punish the bowlers when they were wrong. Deepak Chahar drifted too far from the leg twice in his last over and was taken by a four and a six, while Bravo was cut over when he went short and wide. Tripathi fell to Bravo shortly after, but had racked up a substantial score and kept the Knight Riders fighting in an almost solo effort.
Watson, Rayudu in cruise control
The Super Kings started out the same way the Knight Riders did. Du Plessis continued the form he had displayed against Kings XI Punjab, before overtaking a short and wide Shivam Mavi behind, and Watson and Ambati Rayudu had perfect control thereafter. The races came at a fair pace, and the first ten overs had at least one limit each. The second pair of wickets had added 69 runs when Rayudu hit long, but with 69 needs of 47 balls with eight wickets in hand, the chase was within the control of the Super Kings.
The strangulation of the knights riders
Narine landed the first blow in the final unraveling, catching Watson up front for a 40-ball 50-plus after Rayudu was gone. The batsman checked, but the bowler won on the umpire’s decision with a ball tracking suggesting that the ball would sever the stump of the leg. Crucially, the Super Kings now had two new men with a required 67 of 41 balls, with 17 of them coming from Narine.
Karthik had also retained two of Varun Chakravarthy’s overs, and on a slower pitch, two mysterious spinners for fresh hitters on the fold began to look like a masterstroke. Narine’s first two overs were just eight runs and scored Watson’s wicket, while Chakravarthy proved capable of countering it. Although Curran threw a four and a six on Narine’s third over, the Super Kings’ final round never materialized. Chakravarthy tricked Dhoni, and Russell’s precise delivery pushed Curran into a weak cut. Russell’s lengths proved impossible to escape death, and it was only on the last three balls of the game that he went to the limits, Jadeja hit 6, 4, 4 when the added runs were only academic.
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