 "Kolkata Knight Riders players celebrate after winning the 2024 Indian Premier League with an eight-wicket victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad in Chennai on Sunday, 26 May. AP")
The final of the 2024 Indian Premier League (IPL) was expected to be a tightly-contested affair between Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), the two teams finishing at the top of the table at the end of the league stage.
As It Happened | KKR vs SRH, IPL 2024 Final in Chennai
Instead, it turned out to be one of the most lopsided finals in the history of the world’s richest T20 league as KKR handed SRH a second consecutive eight-wicket thrashing in the playoffs.
Andre Russell (3/19) and Mitchell Starc (2/14) played a key role in helping the Knight Riders bowl the Sunrisers out for a meagre 113 — the lowest total in an IPL final — after Pat Cummins opted to bat.
The in-form Venkatesh Iyer would then make short work of the chase with an unbeaten 52 off 26 balls, guiding his team to victory with nearly 10 overs to spare.
Watch | Kavya Maran emotional after KKR thrash SRH in IPL 2024 final
KKR thus inched closer to Chennai Super Kings (CSK) and Mumbai Indians (MI) — who have five titles each — by winning their third title, which also happened to be their first in a decade.
Gautam Gambhir had helped them win in 2012 and 2014 while Eoin Morgan nearly lifted the trophy himself in 2021, the season in which KKR finished runners-up after a defeat against CSK.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsWith the summit clash of the 17th IPL season coming to a conclusion, we take a look at some of the records broken and milestone achieved during the KKR-SRH clash:
3 — KKR now have three titles and remain third on the list of most successful teams in IPL history behind CSK (5) and MI (5). These three are also the only teams to have won multiple editions of the IPL.
3 — The total number of matches KKR lost in this edition of the IPL, the joint-fewest by a team across a season. Rajasthan Royals had lost as many in the inaugural edition in 2008.
57 — The number of deliveries that were left in the innings after KKR’s successful chase, the biggest ever in an IPL playoff/knockout match as well as the Knight Riders’ second-biggest of all time.
113 — SRH’s total after opting to bat is now the lowest in the history of the IPL finals, surpassing CSK’s 125/9 against MI in 2013. It’s also their joint-second-lowest total ever in the IPL.