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Vishal Dikshit
Kolkata Knight Riders 163 for 5 (Gill 36, Morgan 34, Karthik 29*, Natarajan 2-40) tied with Sunrisers Hyderabad 163 for 6 (Warner 47*, Bairstow 36, Ferguson 3-15)
Super Over Kolkata Knight Riders 3 for 0 beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 2 for 2
Two mid-table sides separated by just two points. Two misfiring middle orders. Two squads unable to use their reserve overseas players in the best possible way. Two teams that were neck and neck with three wins each against each other since 2018. What happened when they met on Sunday evening? A Super Over, of course.
Lockie Ferguson made that one-over face-off a one-sided affair though. Playing his first match in over seven months, Ferguson, in the space of three balls, first removed David Warner’s off stump to hand him a golden duck and then hit the base of Abdul Samad’s middle stump with a full and slower delivery, with only two runs allowed in between. A single from Eoin Morgan and two leg-byes off Dinesh Karthik’s pads with a fumble at short-fine leg gave the Kolkata Knight Riders two points from the third Super Over of the season to keep them on fourth place on the points table.
Ferguson had earlier dented the Sunrisers Hyderabad chase of 164 with a spectacular spell of fast bowling that read 4-0-3-15 without conceding a single boundary. Ferguson did the damage against a tweaked Sunrisers line-up that saw Kane Williamson open with Jonny Bairstow, and Warner push himself down to No. 4. He allowed just seven in the 18th over when the Sunrisers needed 37 from 18. With 30 to win from 12, Samad and Warner targeted Shivam Mavi on the off side for two fours before the former fell off the last ball of the over – another dismissal that featured Ferguson. Samad had clubbed a full toss to deep midwicket where Ferguson pouched the ball right inside the rope before carefully lobbing it to Shubman Gill when he lost balance.
Warner had struck only two fours in his 28-ball 33 when the last over started with Andre Russell bowling a big wide outside off to Rashid Khan from around the wicket which was later called a no-ball. Once Warner got strike, he first found the cow-corner boundary, then hammered a length delivery past the bowler and then whipped an innocuous-looking leg-stump delivery for the third four in a row. With four to get off two, Warner took a double but couldn’t get bat on the last ball and settled for one leg-bye when Russell nipped the ball into his pads. It was time for a Super Over.
More to follow…
Source: ESPN Crickinfo