Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) blew away SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) with an exceptional bowling performance in the Indian Premier League (IPL) final at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. After Pat Cummins won the toss and elected to bat first, the KKR bowlers, led by Mitchell Starc and Vaibhav Arora's fiery powerplay spells, knocked the wind out of SRH's sails. Cummins top-scored with a pride-saving 24 as SRH were bowled out for 113 in 18.3 overs.
However, KKR had a good chance to wrap up SRH's innings inside the total of 100 as Starc dropped a regulation catch of his Australia captain Cummins. The incident happened on the penultimate delivery of the 16th over, off Sunil Narine's bowling.
Bollywood actress Janhvi Kapoor, who was in the stands along with a host of other celebrities, gave a shocking reaction on Starc dropping Cummins' catch.
Starc became the most expensive player in IPL history when Kolkata paid Rs 24.75 crore for his services, overtaking Cummins (20.5 crore) in the same auction in December 2023.
Coming back to the match, SRH were off to a disastrous start as they lost their top guns Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head with just six runs on the board, with the latter getting dismissed for a first-ball duck to a beautiful outswinger.
Before that, Abhishek was bowled by Mitchell Starc on the fifth ball of the first over, a peach of a delivery opening up the left-hander before hitting the top of the off stump.
SRH were in all sorts of trouble as Starc accounted for the wicket of Rahul Tripathi to leave them reeling at 21/3 in the fifth over, the swing doing the trick for KKR bowlers early on.
First-change bowler Harshit Rana continued the good work and got rid of Nitish Reddy (13). Andre Russell dismissed Aiden Markram in his first over as SRH slipped to 62/5 in the 11th over.
SRH could not recover from there.
(With PTI Inputs)