NEW DELHI: Kolkata Knight Riders became the first team to qualify for the IPL 2024 playoffs with an 18-run win against Mumbai Indians at the
Eden Gardens
on Saturday.
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KKR went through to the playoffs with two away games to spare.
The two-time champions posted 157/7 with Venkatesh Iyer top scoring with 42 off 21 balls after being asked to bat first in a 16-overs-a-side match.
Mumbai raced to 65/0 before
Varun Chakravarthy
got the big wickets of impact substitute
Rohit Sharma
(19) and skipper
Hardik Pandya
(2).
Already out of the playoff race, five-time champions Mumbai finished on 139/8.
The official broadcaster of the tournament shared a video after the match which has former cricketer-turned-commentator
Navjot Singh Sidhu
lauding the KKR team and their mentor
Gautam Gambhir
.
Sidhu says in the video, "KKR is the only team which has bowlers who have taken 10-10 wickets and the sixth has taken 9. Show me one team who has this. The most valuable player in the tournament is Sunil Narine. Who got Starc (Mitchell)? Everybody was saying 23 crore, 23 crore. The cynic knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is the value addition, boss. Don't measure him in crores, just see what value addition he is bringing. Look at KKR's bowlers, top batsmen, everybody is in form. They stand like recruits, padded-up, all ready to go in anytime. They have one parallel power centre. Everybody will feel they deserve to do that. They have balance, they have a great mentor, they have a superb captain. They have everybody in form. What else do you want? You can't have everything, where will you keep it?"
Sidhu adds in another video, "I see that whenever there is pressure, Gautam Gambhir gets more inspired, that I should go and tell the boys this and that. And it should be exactly like that. Everything is fine when things are normal. Anybody can be a pilot when the sea is calm. But a person's character is tested when the going is tough."
This is the first time KKR have beaten MI both at Wankhede and at the Eden Gardens in an IPL season.
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