IPL 2021: Kolkata Knight Riders beat Sunrisers Hyderabad by 10 runs at Chepauk

Kolkata Knight Riders riding on the brilliance of their young crop, defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad at the MA Chidambaram stadium on Sunday. Eoin Morgan and company registered a 188-run target and then restricted the orange army to a mere 177, to earn their first points in the 2021 edition of the Indian Premier League. 

Winning the toss, David Warner chose to field first, dropping Kane Williamson for the all-round services of Afghanistan’s Mohammad Nabi. Coming on to bat, KKR openers Nitish Rana and Shubman Gill flew off with a 53-run stand. While Gill fell for cheap, Rana went on to score 80 runs off 56 balls, eventually winning the man of the match award. The other significant performance for Kolkata came from Rahul Tripathi’s bat. The 30-year-old scored a well-paced half-century. After overcoming the hurdle called Rashid Khan (2/24), KKR managed to score 187 runs, Dinesh Karthik staying unbeaten at 22 runs off 9 balls. 

In response, SRH pushed Jonny Bairstow down the order, opening with Warner and Saha. However, this move failed and the team was reduced to 10/2. Manish Pandey (61 runs) and Jonny Bairstow (55 runs) stabilized the ship only to see the team lose to impressive spells by Pat Cummins and Prasidh Krishna. Hyderabad’s Abdul Samad did play an explosive 8-ball 19 run cameo, but the team fell 10 runs short of the target.