On Thursday, Indian spinner Varun Chakravarthy helped Kolkata Knight Riders secure a victory by five runs against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Indian Premier League (IPL). Chakravarthy allowed eight runs in the last over of Sunrisers Hyderabad’s chase.
The South African superstar Aiden Markram, who was leading Hyderabad in the chase for their 172-run goal and who scored 41 runs off of 40 balls, maintained control of the situation until his departure, which occurred when the team still needed 27 runs off of 19 balls.
After losing three wickets in a short amount of time at the beginning of their innings, fellow South African Heinrich Klaasen helped to stabilize the situation by scoring 36 runs off 20 balls while hitting three sixes.
After the out-of-form India opener Mayank Agarwal (18), his partner Abhishek Sharma (9), and Rahul Tripathi (20) failed to convert their starts, they found themselves in a precarious position at 53-3 in the sixth over.
Before the two South Africans set together a 70-run partnership, the England sensation Harry Brook was unable to open his account, which resulted in the Sunrisers being reduced to 54-4.
The game was significantly altered when Markram was bowled out by the Indian rookie bowler Vaibhav Arora in the 17th over. As a result, Hyderabad’s lower-order batsmen were only able to score 166 runs in their 20 overs. The fact that Chakravarthy was able to end with 1-20 despite bowling some of the most difficult overs of the innings earned him the title of player-of-the-match for his four-over performance.
The all-rounder from West Indies, Andre Russell, along with Arora and Shardul Thakur, from India, shared five wickets between them. Earlier, Nitish Rana’s Kolkata team continued to lose wickets at frequent intervals.
Both of the opening batsmen, Rahmanullah Gurbaz (0) of Afghanistan and Jason Roy (20) of England, were dismissed in the first over. The innings was stabilized by Rana (42) and IPL emerging sensation Rinku Singh, who scored a 35-ball 46 before his departure by bowler T Natarajan. In-form Venkatesh Iyer fell for seven, and the innings was then stabilized by Rana and Rinku Singh.
In quick succession, Hyderabad’s two left-arm pacers, Natarajan and South Africa’s Marco Jansen, as well as India swing veteran Bhuvneshwar Kumar, claimed a combined five wickets for their squad.
In his 15-ball 24 run innings, Russell hit two sixes.
“I thought we played good cricket for a large portion of that game but unfortunately in the crunch times we got it wrong,” said Markram. “I thought we played good cricket for a large portion of that game.” The eight-team standings has Kolkata sitting in eighth place, one spot higher than Sunrisers.