Kolkata Knight Riders’ bowlers rip through Sunrisers Hyderabad to win third IPL title

Just like the 2015 World Cup final, Mitchell Starc led the rout of the second-best team of the tournament as Kolkata Knight Riders fashioned the most one-sided IPL final to secure their third title. Starc started with arguably the ball of the tournament, and the most complete attack of the tournament was too good for Sunrisers Hyderabad on a pitch that offered seam movement for at least seven overs followed by grip off the surface too. SRH were bowled out for the lowest total in an IPL final, 113, which KKR chased down with 57 balls to spare thanks to Venkatesh Iyer’s blitz of 52 off 26.

Five of the six bowlers used by KKR took a wicket in their first over, including a golden duck for SRH’s talisman Travis Head to Vaibhav Arora in the second over. It is hard to find fault with SRH who had to take risks while KKR’s strategy was straightforward: with the ball moving, just minimise the bad balls and experiment less. Whenever SRH looked to force the pace, they ended up losing wickets.

Starc didn’t quite start the tournament the way he would have wanted after becoming the costliest player in IPL history, but he turned up for the playoffs all right. The first ball of the match swung away to beat Abhishek Sharma, who was taking first strike after Starc bowled Head second ball in the Qualifier 1. By the end of the over, Starc had worked himself into enough of a rhythm to pitch the ball on leg and hit the top of off. It was an unplayable delivery at Starc’s pace. You could forgive Abhishek for not lunging forward because it was pitched on a good length and the movement was late.

Head got on strike only last ball of the second over, which is when Arora started on a good length outside leg, and swung and seamed it to finish just outside the top of off. Head pushed at it, edged, and was caught behind.

While Arora mixed up his inswing with various-paced short balls, Starc kept using the scrambled-seam ball to threaten both the edges. One outside edge flew wide of slip, before Rahul Tripathi fell off a top edge as he tried to push back.

Brief scores:
Kolkata Knight Riders 114/2 in 10.3 overs (Rahmanullah Gurbaz 39, Venkatesh Iyer 52*; Pat Cummins 1-18, Shahbaz Ahmed 1-22)beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 113 in 18.3 overs (Aiden Mrkram 20, Pat Cummins 24; Mitchell Starc 2-14, Vaibhav Arora 1-24, Harshit Rana 2-24, Sunil Narine 1-16, Andre Rusell 3-19, Varun Chakravarthy 1-09)by eight wickets

(Cricinfo)