It was a thriller as nail-biting as it could get and as exciting as it could get. Sunrisers Hyderabad did give the Kolkata Knight Riders a proper scare in their own backyard at the Eden Gardens in front of a packed crowd and Heinrich Klaasen had his tails up before Harshit Rana kept his calm in the final over to defend 13 runs. Rana not only dismissed both the set batters Klaasen and Shahbaz Ahmed, but also conceded just eight runs despite going for a six off the first ball.
Not just those two wickets in the final over, it was Harshit Rana who began the procession for the Knight Riders in the first place getting rid of Mayank Agarwal in the final over of the powerplay after the Orange Army had gotten off to a flier.
Mayank had already hit a couple of boundaries off Harshit's previous over and the pacer was already fired up and he finally got his man with a sharp bouncer. The short ball aimed at the body got big on Agarwal, who pulled towards the deep square leg fielder but didn't time it that well and Rinku Singh took a simple catch. What followed was a send-off from Harshit Rana, who blew a kiss in Agarwal's face after a stare. Agarwal remained quiet and didn't say anything but did gave him back a long stare while walking off. The video of the send-off has gone viral on social media as many criticised the KKR pacer for doing a send-off to a senior batter like Agarwal, who has played for India too.
Watch the video here:
While Rana took the wickets, it was Sunil Narine's 1/19 spell that might go unnoticed but ended up making the difference with 412 runs getting scored in the match on a belter of a surface. Narine's spell helped KKR build pressure on the middle order and hence the wickets came before Klaasen activated his beast mode.
There was another beast in the game, who was woken up by the Sunrisers, Andre Russell. KKR all-rounder and T20 superstar, Russell chose violence in the very first game of the season smashing an unbeaten 64 off just 25 balls and even took a couple of wickets with the ball as he set the game up for Harshit to finish it. IPL's multi-millionaire Mitchell Starc had a flop day on his KKR debut but that's T20 and he will be raring to go again on Friday, March 29 against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
