Kolkata Knight Riders kicked off their Indian Premier League 2024 campaign with a thrilling 4-run win over Sunrisers Hyderabad at Eden Gardens on Saturday, March 23.
Andre Russell displayed his power hitting by smashing 64* off just 25 balls and debutant Phil Salt scored a brilliant 54 to help Kolkata post 208 while batting first. Rusell also impressed with a ball with two big wickets and Harshit Rana bagged three to restrict Hyderabad to 204.
Chasing a mammoth target, South African star Heinrich Klaasen smashed 63 off just 29 balls and almost boosted SRH to a sensational comeback win but pacer Harshit Rana defended seven runs off the last five balls to boost KKR to a thrilling win.
Big-money Australian signings Pat Cummins (INR 20.5 crore) and Mitchell Starc (INR 24.75 crore) failed to impact their first game of the season. Cummins took a wicket for 32 but missed a shot on the last ball of the game and Starc scored 6* off 3 balls but conceded 51 runs off his four overs without a wicket.
KKR captain Shreyas Iyer also failed to impress on his return from injury as T Natarajan dismissed him on a two-ball duck. Rinku Singh smashed 23 off 15 and a new-singing Ramandeep Singh smashed 35 off just 17 balls to help KKR post a big total.
Natarajan took three wickets for 32 and spinner Mayank Markande, who started ahead of Washington Sundar, bagged two for 39 for SRH. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Marco Jansen proved costly and failed to scalp any wickets.
Mayank Agarwal and impact sub Abhishek Sharma gave Sunrisers an impressive start by adding 60 runs for the opening wickets inside powerplay overs. Kolkata made a comeback with timely wickets in the middle overs with Russell picking big wickets of Abhishek and Abdul Samad.
But Heinrich Klaasen and new trade signing Shahbaz Ahmed added 58 runs for the sixth wicket in just 16 balls. Klaasen smashed Harshit Rana for a six when SRH needed 13 runs to win the game in the last six balls. But Harshit dismissed both Klaasen and Shahbaz in the last over to take the game for KKR.
Kolkata Knight Riders Playing XI: Philip Salt (wk), Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (c), Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Ramandeep Singh (substituted by Suyash Sharma), Mitchell Starc, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy.
Sunrisers Hyderabad Playing XI: Mayank Agarwal, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Abdul Samad, Shahbaz Ahmed, Marco Jansen, Pat Cummins (c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mayank Markande, T Natarajan (Substituted by Abhishek Sharma).
