LSG qualify for the playoffs
LSG QUALIFY FOR THE PLAYOFFS. Krunal joins his little brother in the final four.
That means Mumbai and RCB have to win to make it. If either of them lose tomorrow, they're out of the iPL.
If both of them win, it is likely RCB will go through because they have the better NRR.
The problem there is RCB are playing the defending champions and the table toppers Gujarat Titans. They're hard to beat.
Meanwhile, Mumbai will be taking on the rock bottom team SRH. If both RCB and Mumbai lose, Royals have a chance to sneak in on NRR. There is also a chance of rain in Bengaluru tomorrow where the RCB game is taking place. All in all, it's going to be a HUUUUUGE final day of the league.
CSK are now assured of second place. So Qualifier 1 is set. CSK vs Titans on May 23 in Chennai.
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All eyes on Rinku Part III
474 Runs for Rinku Singh, the most by anyone batting at No. 5 or lower in a single IPL season
Naveen, after going for 20 runs off the first five balls of the 19th over, pulls off a little miracle.
He makes sure the last ball of the 19th over is a dot.
That means Rinku can't be on strike for the start of the 20th.
He gets there though. And has five balls to score 20 runs
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Yash Thakur is the bowler and he is doing so very well. Plan A is to go full and wide outside off. Plan B is to bowl quick and at Rinku's throat.
The two balls that were in line with him went for six. The rest were wide of his reach and because they were wide, he couldn't get underneath the ball enough to keep hitting sixes. Good cricket from Thakur. He bowled overs 18 and 20 and he's helped LSG win by one run.
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All eyes on Rinku Part II
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Two fours to start the over prompts a mini-conference between Naveen the bowler, Krunal the captain and Pooran the senior overseas pro
Rinku meanwhile is pure calm. He just walks up and down the crease. He straps and re-straps his gloves. He gets into his stance and he keeps hitting them to the boundary!
Eden roars as the fourth ball goes for two. Rinku makes it go for two (behind square leg with square leg up). There was never two.
Fifth ball brings up his fifty. HUUUUUUUUUUGE six over square leg. It's 110 metres. But the crucial number is 21 off 7 balls.
Another conference, with bowler and captain this time, Rinku meanwhile just stands in front of his stumps waiting...
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All eyes on Rinku Singh
KKR need 51 off 18
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Only eight times has an IPL team scored 50 runs or more in the last three overs to win a game. KKR have been responsible for three of those miracles.
Rinku only faced two balls in that over. He's the one who hit the six. Thakur and Narine are the wickets. KKR need 41 off 12 balls now
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Bish vs Dre
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Oh this is chef's kiss cricket.
Ravi Bishnoi has Andre Russell right where he wants him. 1 off 7. Pressure mounting.
The legspinner has not bowled anything in the hitting arc. And the slowness of the pitch helped him, meaning those balls into the wicket didn't come on, and the batter was through his horizontal bat shots too soon.
Russell even got hit in the stomach trying to pull a ball that looked pullable until it just stopped on him.
Seeing all this, seeing Russell wants to go, Bishnoi gambles.
He tosses one up. Hoping for a mis-hit. He gets it, but this is Russell. Even balls coming off the bottom of his bat go for sixes.
So Bishnoi reassesses. And maybe even bluffs the batter. He has Krunal standing right on the sight-screen at long-off. Stoinis at long-on comes straighter too. Midwicket goes squarer.
That field suggests another tossed up ball. But that's not what comes out.
It's the flatter googly. Dre Russ is caught napping. And he's bowled. KKR need 56 off 24 balls. Their chances of victory are just 8%
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KKR strangled by spin
KKR were 61 for 1 in the powerplay.
Since then, they've faced 46 balls and scored only 47 runs and lost three wickets.
LSG's spinners are the reason for this. Krunal, Bishnoi and Gowtham have all gone for 7.5 runs an over or under.
And their good work - their pressure - results in a wicket for the fast bowler Yash Thakur. Rahmanullah Gurbaz, batting out of position, falls for 10 off 15.
Andre Russell joins Rinku Singh at the crease with the required rate at nearly two runs a ball. KKR's chances of winning, according to ESPNcricinfo forecaster, is only 20%
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Rinku vs spin
Excellent captaincy from Krunal Pandya.
Rinku Singh is at the crease and he is in the form of his life but he is markedly more destructive against pace (SR 166) than he is against spin (SR 111).
LSG have four overs of spin left - three from Bishnoi and one from Gowtham.
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Gowtham comes back in the 12th over to finish his quota. 1 for 26 on the night. KKR need 84 off 48. ESPNcricinfo's forecaster says they have 26% of winning from this point on.
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Bishnoi & Krunal strike
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Outstanding first over from Ravi Bishnoi. He takes his 100th IPL wicket in his 86th match by removing Nitish Rana.
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In the next over, with two right-handers in, Krunal brings himself on and takes out the danger man Roy. Thats the end of Krunal for the night, but he signs off with SUCH a crucial wicket. That puts two new batters at the crease and one of them is out of position. KKR need 95 off 60 balls
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Roy vs spin
218 Jason Roy's strike rate against spin this IPL - the best of anyone who has faced 30 balls of this kind of bowling.
The England opener has hit 10 sixes and 11 fours in 56 balls off the spinners. A good proportion of those are sweep shots. Sometimes it feels like the length doesn't matter. He sweeps full balls. He sweeps short balls. He can also paddle, slog and reverse.
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Perfect start
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KKR have pushed Venkatesh Iyer to open ahead of Rahmanullah Gurbaz.
They've done that to exploit the fact that one side of the ground is smaller than the other.
Gurbaz and Jason Roy are a right-right combo. So they wouldn't have been able to take advantage of the ground dimensions.
So up goes the left-handed Iyer and the first boundary he hits - the first of the KKR innings - is to the short boundary on the off side.
Roy is equally belligerent in the second over.
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Naveen-ul-Haq was bowling the second over. Eden kept roaring Virat Kohli's name. This is the reason why.
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LSG finish on 176
KKR sent back Harshit Rana after he bowled three overs to bring in Suyash Sharma as their Impact sub.
Suyash has bowled only one over.
Harshit, who might have bowled in the death, is not available now.
So they have to go to Dre Russ. Bowling his first over. In the 20th of the innings.
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LSG were 73 for 5. At the time, KKR had taken four wickets in 25 balls for 19 runs. Then on came Nic Pooran and smashed his first three for boundaries. That sparked the turnaround.
Eden Gardens is a tough ground to defend a total, and this pitch is off-centre, which means one side is smaller than the other.
LSG need to win this game to stay in playoff contention - they might still stay in contention if they lose, but for that, they'll need both Mumbai AND RCB to lose their games tomorrow. Mumbai are unlikely to lose. They play the bottom placed team in the tournament.
79 The total LSG must restrict KKR to in order to take second place. KKR meanwhile will have to chase this down in 47 balls to move up into the top four. DIsclaimer: all this will change a bit if they win with a six/four with scores tied etc.
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Pooran fifty and out!
Sunil Narine's 18th over goes for a bit though
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Ayush Badoni who was 14 off 17 at the start of the over got up to 25 off 21 before he was dismissed looking for a third big hit. LSG 147 for 6.
Shardul Thakur's pace is just right in the 19th over.
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Pooran gets to fifty hitting the first ball for six and follows it up with another six. In a 29-ball innings, he's hit 5 sixes. That's one every 5.8 balls.
The fun doesn't last though. Pooran knows he has to keep hitting. One goes high than long. He ends up caught at deep point. He goes for 58 off 30.
5 Times that Thakur has dismissed Pooran in 18 balls in T20 cricket
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KKR regaining control
Varun Chakravarthy's 16th over
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Vaibhav Arora's 17th over.
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It wasn't a bad over, or rather a bad plan, Arora was trying to hide the ball away from Pooran's reach outside off and in doing so, he strayed past the wide line. The boundary he conceded was off a bit of an edge too.
KKR regaining control. LSG 133 for 6. ESPNcricinfo's forecaster says they're likely to 164 from here.
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Pooran the danger
8.26 Balls per six for Nicholas Pooran. He has 23 in 190 balls this IPL. The leading six-hitter this season, Faf du Plessis, hits one every 12.6 balls. Pooran might also end up with more sixes than fours (24) in IPL 2023
This pitch at Eden is a little off-centre. So one part of the ground is smaller than the other. For a player like Pooran, who needs no invitation to send balls into orbit, that's basically rolling out the red carpet.
LSG's sixth-wicket partnership is 47 off 32. And it's that slow only because Ayush Badoni is 10 off 13.
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KKR's Innovation sub?
KKR are usually at the sharp edge of innovation in T20 cricket. They invest in mystery spin. They made Sunil Narine open because they wanted a batting line-ups that attacks from ball one. And now they've used the Impact Sub in a way its rarely been used this season.
Most teams have been happy with an extra batter in the XI when they're batting and swapping him out for the bowler when they have to bowl.
Here, KKR have decided to send back Harshit Rana, who had bowled 3-0-21-1, and have brought in Suyash Sharma, which means in effect they can get seven overs from the same player in a T20 game.
Suyash hasn't come on to bowl yet, but this is the kind of thing that was being talked about in our offices, especially by our statsguru Shiva Jayaraman.
The other thing is that KKR need to win this BIIIIIIG. And they CHOSE to bowl. So maybe, their plan was always this. To stack their bowling, limit LSG to a total on the lower end, and then go bang bang bang with people like Andre Russell and Rinku Singh and maybe even Shardul Thakur
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Pooran comes in hot
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This is no way to treat a wicket-taker. Or a scoreline that read 73 for 5 when he came in
KKR had taken the last four wickets during a period of 25 balls where they gave away just 19 runs,
Having faced just four balls, Pooran has already collected 15.
IMPACT SUB SUYASH ON THE FIELD FOR HARSHIT RANA, who had one over to bowl, but he won't be able to now. Suyash will get the chance to bowl all four if need be.
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de Kock slows down
Four overs into the game, Quinton de Kock was the owner of both of LSG's boundaries. Both sixes.
Since then, he's faced 13 balls and scored just eight runs.
That double-wicket over from Arora, where they lost Stoinis, may have made de Kock reassess. It may have made him drop anchor.
But that still doesn't explain going at less than a run a ball.
Especially when it has probably played into Krunal Pandya losing his wicket at the other end. The LSG stand-in captain, feeling run-rate pressure, tried to take on Sunil Narine and was caught on the square leg boundary.
And now de Kock's gone too. This game is going all sorts of wrong for LSG. Another double-strike.
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Rana shines
He wasn't first choice captain, but NItish Rana has stepped in to fill the void left behind by the injured Shreyas Iyer quite well.
Seeing two left-handers at the crease, and knowing they're under pressure after losing two wickets in three balls, he comes on with his offbreaks and takes an over out of the game.
Only three runs off the part-timer. That's excellent defensive captaincy. He saw the moment. He recognised that he could win it. And he has. LSG 58 for 3 in eight overs
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Pace like fiyah
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Vaibhav Arora has bounced out a guy who plays on some of the fastest pitches in the world.
Marcus Stoinis, who played perhaps his best IPL innings in his last dig, is gone for a second-ball duck.
LSG in a game they HAVE to win - if they want to keep their fate in their hands - to make the playoffs have lost one of their best and its only the seventh over of the game and they have only 55 runs on the board.
This Eden pitch has plenty of pace on it and their quicks - their tall strong quicks - are digging it into the pitch.
It's nowhere close to the conditions that LSG play in at Lucknow, but you'd think batters like Stoinis would enjoy the ball coming onto the bat. Nope. Not when its coming up to his throat.
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Mankad switches on
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Even so he's only 16 off 14, which shows just how slow he and his team was in getting off the blocks tonight.
LSG appear to believe that they need all their big guns in the middle and lower order. It feels like they think that's the place where T20 games are won and lost.
That's where they keep Marcus Stoinis (368 runs at 151 SR), even though he opens in the BBL. That's where they keep Nicholas Pooran (300 runs at 170 SR), even though he has history at No. 3 for West Indies.
Both those players are big reasons for LSG still being in the race for the playoffs.
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Weird start
LSG don't look on it.
Potentially because they've gone into this huuuuuge game with two untested batting talents at the top of the order.
Karan Sharma (3 off 5) didn't last long. Prerak Mankad (4 off 8) has just let a free hit ball become a dot ball.
They've both been slow to react to two KKR fast bowlers cranking it up near 145 kph. De Kock is carrying them right now. 19 off 12 in a total that's 27 off 24. He's also hit both of the boundaries so far, sixes over midwicket and square leg.
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KKR's super start
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Eden Gardens rumbles.
"Kay-Kay-Arr! Kay-Kay-Arr!"
They've taken an early wicket.
And it's the kind of wicket that will gee up the team.
A fast bowler beating an opening batter for pace and bouncing him out.
Harshit Rana strikes. Karan Sharma gone. Eight dots in the first 18 balls.
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What LSG need for 2nd place
97 runs, the margin of victory LSG need to get into second place, past CSK, on NRR for scores from 160-180
Did KKR do the right thing by bowling first?
235 votesYes, knowing the target helps
No, in a net run-rate battle, they should've batted first
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Toss: KKR will bowl
Rana said KKR are chasing because they need a huge NRR boost, but it still doesn't make things easier on them. Assuming LSG put up 180 on the board, they will have to score them all in 47 balls if they have to go above fourth-placed RCB's current net run rate.
No changes in the home side.Two changes for Super Giants. Allrounder Karan Sharma comes in for allrounder Deepak Hooda and allrounder K Gowtham comes in for left-arm spinner Swapnil Singh
Lucknow Super Giants: 1 Quinton de Kock (wk), 2 Prerak Mankad, 3 Krunal Pandya (capt), 4 Marcus Stoinis, 5 Nicholas Pooran, 6 Ayush Badoni, 7 Karan Sharma, 8 K Gowtham, 9 Naveen-ul-Haq, 10 Ravi Bishnoi, 11 Mohsin Khan
Kolkata Knight Riders: 1 Jason Roy, 2 Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), 3 Venkatesh Iyer, 4 Nitish Rana (capt), 5 Andre Russell, 6 Rinku Singh, 7 Shardul Thakur, 8 Sunil Narine, 9 Harshit Rana, 10 Vaibhav Arora, 11 Varun Chakravarthy
It appears as they KKR might have presented their bat-first XI instead of their bowl-first XI, because there is no way Venkatesh Iyer is in there ahead of Suyash Sharma. Especially after Rana pointed out how the rookie legspinner has been a big positive for them.
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Welcome!
In a ground that bears a stand with his name, Chennai Super Kings look like they are favourites to go through to the playoffs. That leaves mentor Gautam Gambhir and the rest of his Lucknow Super Giants with a problem. Except he probably doesn't think that way. He might not even have glanced at the scorecard in Delhi.
Gambhir is the kind of guy who would focus all of his considerable energy on what he can affect. Like getting his players in the best frame of mind to go out into the Eden Gardens and get the two points they need to book their own passage into the knockouts.
KKR have an outside chance of making it too. Except, they'll need to win (BIG) and then hope both Mumbai Indians and Royal Challengers Bangalore lose their last game.
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