Chennai Super Kings broke a four-match losing streak and beat Kolkata Knight Riders to take away any breathing room the latter might have in trying to qualify for the playoffs in IPL 2025.
KKR elected to bat first and were helped along the way by Ajinkya Rahane and Sunil Narine during the field restrictions. Noor Ahmad (4 for 31) struck twice in his first over to leave KKR reeling. Ravindra Jadeja got the better of Rahane (48 off 33), but Andre Russell (38 off 21) was up to the task. Even with all the starts, KKR could only manage 179 – a total their skipper went on to term below par.
CSK on the other hand ran into trouble straightaway. Both of their openers were out for ducks, but IPL debutant Urvil Patel (31 off 11) did not let it deter him. Patel smashed an amazing four sixes in his brief stay. A move for R Ashwin to No. 4 didn’t work and Varun Chakravarthy (2 for 18) cut Jadeja’s stay short. Half the CSK side was back in the hut in the powerplay.
Chakravarthy and Narine continued to exert pressure during the middle overs, with Dewald Brevis (52 off 25) and Shivam Dube (45 off 40) motoring along. Something had to give, and Brevis found it. With KKR needing 87 runs off the last ten overs, Brevis took Vaibhav Arora apart for 30 runs in the 11th over to make the equation easy for CSK.
KKR though, didn’t go down without a fight as Chakravarthy snared Brevis and the bowlers kept a tight leash on a struggling Dube and MS Dhoni. Dube was eventually able to find the fences at the right time to keep CSK inching closer to victory, while Dhoni and Anshul Kamboj saw them through in the last over.
Here are the most important numbers from the game
3 – The Eden Gardens in Kolkata is now the third stadium to host 100 IPL matches. The other two are the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai (124) and the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru (100).
9 – Ajinkya Rahane became the ninth player overall, and the seventh Indian, to breach the 5000-run mark in the IPL.
1 – With 141, Ravindra Jadeja is now CSK’s highest wicket-taker in the IPL going past Dwayne Bravo’s 140.
1 – MS Dhoni is now the first wicketkeeper to effect 200 dismissals with the gloves in the IPL. The now-retired Dinesh Karthik is a distant second with 174, and at an even more distant third is another retiree – Wriddhiman Saha with 113. Rishabh Pant with 100 rounds up the list of wicketkeepers with 100 dismissals in the IPL.
12 – This game was the twelfth instance of both openers of the same team making ducks in an IPL match. With CSK, it had happened only once before. Both Stephen Fleming and Parthiv Patel had departed without adding to the score against RR at Jaipur in 2008.
2 – Vaibhav Arora became only the second KKR bowler to concede 30 or more runs in an over in the IPL. Moeen Ali had become the first in KKR’s previous fixture.
1 – Varun Chakravarthy completed the milestone of 100 wickets in the IPL. By the number of matches taken, Chakravarthy is the joint-fastest spinner to the milestone. Chakravarthy got there in 83 matches, the same number taken by Amit Mishra and Rashid Khan. Yuzvendra Chahal with 84 and Sunil Narine with 86 matches respectively are in tow.
2 – Chakravarthy is also the joint-second fastest Indian player to 100 IPL wickets by matches. The top spot is shared by Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Harshal Patel who took 81 matches each while Chakravarthy’s number of 83 is matches by Mishra and Ashish Nehra. Chahal and Sandeep Sharma (87) are next in line.
1 – MS Dhoni became the first player to register 100 not outs in the IPL. Ravindra Jadeja with 80 is a distant second.
2018 – The last time CSK successfully chased a target of 180 or more in the IPL. They lost all 12 such matches ever since before registering a win in this game.
2 – KKR ultimately squandered an opportunity to complete the season double over CSK, i.e., beat them in both league stage matches in a single season. RCB registered their first season double over CSK in their last match, this now leaves KKR and SRH as the only existing franchises without a season double over CSK.
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