Kolkata Knight Rider beat Royal Challenger Bangalore by 4 wickets.
Again Bangalore can’t make it to the finals and missed their chance to grab the IPL trophy.
Kolkata’s chase was well-planned, but they would have preferred to end the game before the last over. Powerplay was going to be essential on a tricky Sharjah surface, and Kolkata did well to put 48 runs on the board. Venkatesh Iyer and Shubman Gill played very well together to build a stand. The dismissal of Gill was followed by the dismissal of Rahul Tripathi, but Iyer joined forces with Nitish Rana to build a crucial 26-run combination at a time when Bangalore was seeking to snuff off the momentum. The equation was pretty clear by the time Venkatesh Iyer was dismissed in the 11th over, as Kolkata required 60 off 54 balls.
With the desired rate under control, Kolkata chose to send Sunil Narine up the order to stop the chase completely. The West Indians answered by smashing Dan Christian’s 12th over for 22 runs. After that, there was no scoreboard pressure on Kolkata, and despite Mohammed Siraj’s double smashes in the 18th over, Kolkata crossed the line thanks to the cool heads of Eoin Morgan and Shakib Al Hasan.
That’s all for this edition from Bangalore. It was a tremendous season for them, but their season has come to an end. In this game, their openers got them off to a fast start, but the Kolkata spinners slowed them down in the middle overs and didn’t give them any breathing room. 138 was never going to be enough, but Bangalore fought bravely. Harshal Patel and Yuzvendra Chahal were outstanding with the ball, with the former finishing the season with 32 wickets, the joint-most by a bowler in a single season.
Man of the Match
Sunil Narine became Man of the Match