Kolkata Knight Riders thrashed in-form Surnrisers Hyderabad with a dominant all-round performance to storm into the IPL 2024 final on Tuesday, May 21. Mitchell Starc produced his best performance of the season to bowl out Sunrisers to 159 and then fifties from Venkatesh Iyer and Shreyas Iyer led KKR to an easy eight-wicket win at Ahmedabad's Narendra Modi Stadium.
After finishing the league stages at the top of the points table, Shreyas-led Kolkata dominated the Qualifier 1 fixture with an impressive performance to reach the finals for the fourth time and the first time since 2021. Notably, the teams winning Qualifier 1 have won the tournament every time since 2018.
Sunrisers Hyderabad, who finished second ahead of Rajasthan Royals after thrashing PBKS in their final league-stage match, started with the same playing eleven but struggled to match Kolkata's top-notch performance with both bat and ball.
Mitchell Starc, the most expensive signing in the tournament, dismissed in-form Travis Head on the very second delivery in the match and picked two more wickets in the powerplay to keep Sunrisers under pressure. In-form Varun Chakravarthy scalped two wickets for just 26 to throw his name in the Purple Cap race this season.
Four of Hyderabad's top five batters failed to register a double-digit score but Rahul Tripathi and Heinrich Klaasen scorched a 62-run stand for the fifth wicket to lead the team past 100 inside the first eleven overs. Tripathi top-scored with 55 off just 35 balls to celebrate his maiden fifty of the season before losing his wicket to a run-out dismissal.
Hyderabad's innings collapsed after Klaasen's dismissal in the 11th over but Cummins, batting at no.9, added 30 runs off 24 balls to charge his team past a 150-plus total. Chasing a challenging total, the Knight Riders lost Sunil Narine and Rahmanullah Gurbaz early but an unbeaten 97-run stand between Shreyas and Venkatesh helped KKR chase down a target with 38 balls remaining.
Venkatesh Iyer scored 51* off 28 balls while Shreyas top-scored with 58* off just 24 balls. Shreyas finished the game early by smashing Travis Head for four consecutive boundaries, including three sixes, in the 14th over. Starc bagged the Player of the Match award for his sensational spell in powerplay.
In the Qualifier 2, Sunrisers Hyderabad will take on the winner from tomorrow's Eliminator between Rajasthan Royals and Royal Challengers Bengaluru at Chennai's MA Chidambaram Stadium on May 24.
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, Abhishek Sharma (substituted by Sanvir Singh), Rahul Tripathi, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Abdul Samad, Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins(c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, T Natarajan.
