Rahmanullah Gurbaz in action for KKR during IPL 2024 final© X (formerly Twitter)
Kolkata Knight Riders claimed the IPL 2024 title with a comprehensive victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad on Sunday but the summit clash was not without controversy. KKR opener Rahmanullah Gurbaz was left fuming following a controversial LBW decision that prevented him from scoring a half-century. During the 9th over of the KKR innings, Gurbaz went for a sweep shot against Shahbaz Ahmed but the ball turned a bit and hits his pads. The on-field umpire raised his finger but Gurbaz quickly took a review and the batter looked extremely confident that he was not-out.
The third umpire checked for an inside edge but did not find anything conclusive and Ravi Shastri said on commentary that ball-tracking and UltraEdge are not working. The third umpire ultimately ruled in SRH’s favour leaving Gurbaz visibly upset.
KKR rode a flamboyant half-century from Venkatesh Iyer following an impressive bowling show from Andre Russell, Mitchell Starc and Harshit Rana to defeat SRH by 8 wickets in the IPL 2024 final.
Having lost the toss, KKR produced a clinical effort with the ball to dismiss SRH for 113, the lowest ever total in an IPL title clash.
KKR chased down the target of 114 with as many as 57 balls to spare. Venkatesh Iyer remained not out on 52 off 26 balls.
Mitchell Starc (2/14), Andre Russell (3/19) and Harshit Rana (2/24) were the most successful bowlers for the Knight Riders, as SRH simply failed to turn up for the big game.
Opting to bat first, SRH were off to a disastrous start as they lost their top guns Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head with just six runs on the board, with the latter getting dismissed for a first-ball duck to a beautiful outswinger.
Before that, Abhishek was bowled by Mitchell Starc on the fifth ball of the first over, a peach of a delivery opening up the left-hander before hitting the top of the off stump.
SRH were in all sorts of trouble as Starc accounted for the wicket of Rahul Tripathi to leave them reeling at 21/3 in the fifth over, the swing doing the trick for KKR bowlers early on.
First-change bowler Harshit Rana continued the good work and got rid of Nitish Reddy (13). Andre Russell dismissed Aiden Markram in his first over as SRH slipped to 62/5 in the 11th over.
(With PTI inputs)
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