Kolkata Knight Riders pulled off a dominant eight-wicket win over Sunrisers Hyderabad to clinch the IPL 2024 title on Sunday, May 26. Shreyas Iyer-led KKR chased down a low-scoring target against SRH at MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai to claim the famous trophy for the third time in their history.
The summit clash proved as a one-sided affair with one team dominating in every department. Pacers Mitchell Starc, Harshit Rana and Andre Russell produced impactful displays to bowl out Sunrisers Hyderabad to a 113 total, the lowest in the history of IPL finals.
Chasing a low-scoring total, Kolkata lost in-form opener Sunil Narine early but Venkatesh Iyer and Rahmanullah Gurbaz added 91 runs for the second wicket to record one of the easiest chases in the finals of the tournament. Kolkata Knight Riders lifted the famous trophy after a long gap of nine years.
Venkatesh Iyer top-scored with 52* off just 26 balls with the help of four fours and three sixes and also scored the winning runs in the 11th over. Pat Cummins and Shahbaz Ahmed took a wicket each for the losing side but the likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar and T Natarajan proved costly in the final.
Meanwhile, Cummins elected to bat first after winning the crucial toss with both teams fielding the same playing elevens. Sunrisers Hyderabad, with three 250-plus totals this season, struggled against KKR's impressive pace attack in the beginning and never threatened to make a comeback in the game.
Cummins, batting at the no.8, top-scored with 24 runs off 19 balls and struggling Aiden Markram added 20 runs off 23 balls. Russell emerged as the best bowler with three wickets for 19 while Starc and Harshit bagged two each for the winning side.
Kolkata Knight Riders Playing XI: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy.
Sunrisers Hyderabad Playing XI: Travis Head (substituted by Abdul Samad), Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins (c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat, T Natarajan.
