New Delhi, Lucknow has become the second team to reach the Super Giants playoffs in the 16th season of the IPL T20 cricket tournament. The Lucknow Super Giants thrashed Kolkata Knight Riders by two runs in a thrilling match in IPL-204 at the DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai on Wednesday.
With this, they have become the second team to reach the playoffs after the Gujarat Titans. Interestingly, both the teams are playing their first IPL.
Lucknow finished second in the points table with 12 points from 12 matches. While Kolkata’s campaign ended with 14 points in 17 matches. In Wednesday’s match, Lucknow won the toss and elected to bat first.
With the help of Quint’s Decock and skipper Lokesh Rahul’s half-century, Lucknow scored a massive 210 for no wicket in the allotted 20 overs.
Decock was unbeaten on 140 and Rahul on 9. In response, the Kolkata team also counterattacked and made the match exciting till the final ball and Kolkata lost on the final ball. Kolkata scored 206 runs for the loss of eight wickets in 20 overs. Kolkata needed 31 runs in the final over to win.
However, Rinku Singh made this over very heartbreaking. At one point Kolkata was in a position to win. However, his tumultuous innings did not help the team win. Rinku Singh hit a four off the first ball of the final over by Marcus Stoinis and then hit two sixes off two balls in a row. Thus, in the first three balls, he had scored 18 runs.
Now Kolkata needed five runs off three balls. Took two runs off the fourth ball and now needed three runs off two balls to win.
However, Stoinis later picked up two wickets in two balls to give Lucknow the victory. He dismissed Rinku Singh on the fifth ball and Umesh Yadav on the final ball to collect the pavilion and lead the team to victory. Rinku Singh hit 40 off 18 balls with the help of two fours and four sixes.
Kolkata, on the other hand, lost Venkatesh Iyer’s wicket on the fourth ball of the innings, which could not even open the account. While his fellow opener Abhijeet Tomar also scored four runs to collect the pavilion. The team lost both its openers by nine runs. SS1MS