Watch cricket video highlights between Kolkata Knight Riders vs Delhi Capitals. Indian Premier League 2024 forty seventh match, played at Eden Gardens.
Eden Gardens reverted to a previous template familiar to supporters of its home team after hosting a run-fest where 262 was chased down with eight balls remaining. Kolkata Knight Riders, meanwhile, got back to winning ways and moved up to second place on the IPL table with a confident, net-run-rate-boosting seven-wicket victory over Delhi Capitals. Eden delivered a somewhat gripped pitch following a series of flat ones, and KKR’s bowlers took full advantage of it when the Capitals elected to bat first. During the powerplay, Mitchell Starc and Vaibhav Arora claimed three wickets each. Following this, Varun Chakravarthy and Sunil Narine combined for figures of 8-0-40-4 as the spinners took over. After being down to 111 for 8 at one point, Kuldeep Yadav’s surprising, unbeaten 35 off of 26 balls gave the Capitals a target of 150 or more.
The Capitals had the means to apply some pressure on this pitch with Kuldeep and Axar Patel in their attack, but KKR was already well on their way to win before either spinner had bowled a ball. In five home games this season, Phil Salt has made his fourth fifty. He dominated a powerplay that saw KKR race to 79 runs without losing. When Axar Patel entered the game, he quickly removed both of the KKR openers. However, it was too little, too late for the Capitals, as Shreyas Iyer and Venkatesh Iyer scored an unbroken 57 runs off of 43 balls to put the game out of reach with 21 balls left. With nine games played, KKR has amassed 12 points—more than any other side in the competition—and an NRR of 1.096.
On Monday night, Jake Fraser-McGurk only faced seven balls, and five of those were yorker attempts, two of which resulted in full-tosses. The other two took a severe blow to their length. Mitchell Starc provided the most of these balls, although Vaibhav Arora also followed the similar strategy with his two balls. This was not a pair of quick bowlers trying to find swing with the new ball from a fairly decent length. This was death bowling during the powerplay, and we’ll probably see a lot more of it going forward as T20 batting tends to push more and more towards an all-out assault.
Fraser-McGurk struck a four and a six that day, and he also successfully picked up a deep square leg while attempting to flick Starc for a further six. Prithvi Shaw, who had started the match with three fours off Starc, was already out of the Capitals lineup by that point. He had collapsed in a nondestructive way, choking Arora down the side of his leg. Arora removed another wicket with a delivery that struck the top of Shai Hope’s off stump with a peach that straightened off the deck. The ball indicated that it would also grip for the spinners, and that proved to be the case.
Varun has had a challenging season, going at 9.72 and taking eight wickets in eight games prior to this one. While Narine had avoided allowing batsmen to reach the boundaries despite the flat conditions, especially in Kolkata, his spin partner had been as successful as any bowler for KKR in their games. But now that the pitch was helping a little, Varun might have taken the lead with the first ball if Harshit Rana, who had just removed a dangerous-looking Abishek Porel in the previous over, hadn’t dropped a simple catch after a mistake by Rishabh Pant at short third. In his subsequent over, which was the 11th of the Capitals innings, Pant attempted to hit Varun once again but made another error, allowing Shreyas Iyer to securely bag him in the covers.
As soon as Varun began to get the ball to bite on the surface, he took two more wickets, including those of Tristan Stubbs and Kumar Kushagra, the Impact Sub who had entered the game in an unsuccessful attempt to extend the Capitals’ batting innings and stop the collapse. Within the 15th over, the Capitals were eight wickets down when Narine removed Axar Patel at the opposite end. Nevertheless, they were able to finish their 20, thanks in part to Kuldeep’s talent and good fortune. He concluded with a control percentage of 41 after hitting two edged fours in his first four balls. He then struck a six from Starc that was very almost a catch at deep backward square leg. Nonetheless, the runs were crucial in helping the Capitals reach 150.
The slower ball was clearly holding the surface and halting on the batters during the early stages of KKR’s chase, but it was also clear that the Capitals’ quicks were frequently providing width to liberate the arms. This was a recipe for danger, especially with Salt and Narine in their current state. And to make matters worse, Lizaad Williams, who had already gone for 23 in the opening over, let up an easy chance to put Salt on 15 at the beginning of the second over off Khaleel Ahmed. During the powerplay, the openers quickly reached 79 for 0, with Salt, who was getting most of the strike, scoring a half-century off 26 balls in the sixth over.
When attempting to hit with the turn in the seventh over, Narine attempted to hit Axar’s opening ball but was outmatched. In the ninth over, Axar bowled Salt with his signature inward-angling skidder. However, even after Williams removed Rinku Singh in the tenth over with a solid, hard-length ball, KKR’s needed rate was still significantly below a run per ball. Andre Russell, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, and Ramandeep Singh did not need to bat because KKR had a lengthy, talented lineup of hitters ahead of them. The two Iyers finished out the match with minimal difficulty, save for an error in the 16th over, when it was already virtually decided.
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