In the 34th match of the VIVO IPL 2021, Kolkata Knight Riders beat Mumbai Indians by seven wickets. Venkatesh Iyer and Rahul Tripathi powered KKR to a comprehensive victory while chasing 156. MI 155/6, Quinton de Kock (55), Lockie Ferguson (2/27). KKR 159/3, Rahul Tripathi (74*), Jasprit Bumrah (3/43).
Kolkata Knight Riders skipper, Eoin Morgan won the toss and chose to bowl. The Kolkata-based franchise restricted MI for a below-par target of 156 in their allotted 20 overs. The two-time IPL winners commenced the chase in style as the opener Shubman Gill (13) flicked a maximum to Trent Boult on the second ball of the innings. Jasprit Bumrah got the first breakthrough for the five-time IPL winners. Gill was the first casualty for KKR, the 22-year-old was clean bowled in the third over. Rahul Tripathi was the number three batsman at the crease, he joined the counter-attack with Iyer. KKR had an overwhelming start to their run chase, they managed to score 63 in the powerplay. Iyer and Tripathi continued the assault and gathered 88 runs for the second wicket. The partnership was broken by Bumrah in the 12th over when Iyer was bowled while attempting a slog towards mid-wicket. Morgan came out to bat at number four, the KKR-captain contributed seven runs before he became Bumrah’s third victim. The new batsman, Nitish Rana played the reverse-sweep and scored a boundary at backward point to complete the chase with 29 balls to spare.
Quinton de Kock (55) and Rohit Sharma (33) were the major contributors for MI. The Mumbai-openers gave a confident start, but the defending champions couldn’t sustain the momentum throughout the innings.
Lockie Ferguson and Prasidh Krishna pocketed two wickets each while Sunil Narine pocketed one. Bumrah got three wickets to his name and was the only wicket-taker for Mumbai in the game.
With this victory, KKR replaced MI at the fourth spot with eight points in nine games. Narine was the Man of the match for a tidy spell of 20 runs with one wicket.