Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) became the first team to qualify for the IPL 2024 finals after defeating Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in a comfortable win on Tuesday.
Match Highlights:
- SRH won the toss and decided to bat first at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
- Openers Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head failed to make an impact as Head was dismissed by Mitchell Starc in the first over.
- SRH kept losing wickets regularly and were 39/4 after 5 overs.
- Rahul Tripathi (55 off 35 balls) and Heinrich Klaasen (32 off 21 balls) formed a partnership to take SRH past 100 runs.
- After Tripathi’s dismissal, SRH collapsed to 129/9 in the 16th over.
- A late partnership between captain Pat Cummins and Vijayakanth Viyaskanth helped SRH post 159 runs.
In reply, KKR opted to open with Sunil Narine and Rahmanullah Gurbaz:
- The openers started aggressively but Gurbaz was dismissed in the 4th over by T Natarajan.
- Narine continued attacking until dismissed by Cummins while trying to slog.
- Venkatesh Iyer and Shreyas Iyer then guided KKR to chase down the remaining runs comfortably.
With this win, the Shreyas Iyer-led KKR secured a spot in the IPL 2024 finals.