Kolkata Knight Riders 157 for 7 (Venkatesh 42, Rana 33, Chawla 2-28, Bumrah 2-39) beat Mumbai Indians 139 for 8 (Kishan 40, Tilak 32, Chakravarthy 2-17, Russell 2-34, Harshit 2-34) by 18 runs
On an evening that started with the ball swinging around like a boomerang following plenty of rain in Kolkata, Kolkata Knight Riders’ spin twins – Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine – stifled Mumbai Indians’ chase to seal a playoffs berth for their side, with an almost-certain finish in the top two as well.
After MI were set 158 overs in 16 overs, Chakravarthy and Narine started the strangle that saw MI score just 22 runs in the five overs after the powerplay for two wickets that mounted the pressure on the visitors.
Suryakumar Yadav and Tim David had no choice but to go after the quicks and fell to Andre Russell’s variations that saw MI stumble to 92 for 5 and there was no coming back from there, barring a late cameo from Tilak Varma. He reduced the equation to 22 required from the six balls, but his wicket early in the last over eventually handed MI their ninth loss in 13 matches.
After rain had delayed the start of the game by an hour and 45 minutes, the match was reduced to 16 overs a side. Even though KKR lost their openers early, Venkatesh Iyer and some lower-order hitting powered them to 157, which may have seemed short early on but proved to be enough.
