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Chennai: Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) handed a stern defeat to Chennai Super Kings (CSK) by 8 wickets in their Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 yardstick of dominance match at the MA Chidambaram Stadium on Friday. It was an effortless victory for KKR, thanks in no small part to Sunil Narine's impressive all-round performance of 44 runs, 3 wickets, and 13 runs.
Narine, Varun Chakaravarthy, and Moeen Ali shared the left-handed batter spoils on a black-soil pitch giving assistance to spinners as CSK’s batting collapsed to an abysmal 103/9 which marked their lowest IPL scre at Chepauk. During the chase, KKR scored the meager target with 59 balls to spare. Narine's aggressive hitting negated any hope CSK's pace bowlers had. The match propelled KKR to 3rd in the points standings. This game also marked the beginning of a worrying trend for CSK as they now have pocketed 5 consecutive losses for the first time in IPL history.
With the toss losing in hand, CSK (with MS Dhoni as captain) wanted to bat first but as it turns out their kinks were not ironed out and they could not get going due to the strict discipline shown by KKR bowlers, leading to a mix of pressure and poor shot selection. It was only because of Shivam Dube's unbeaten 31 which came off 29 balls that CSK were saved from being handed the lowest total (79) in IPL history. Devon Conway started off with two boundaries from pacer Vaibhav Arora but later on tried to reverse sweep off Moeen and was trapped LBW (wicket maiden over) which saw him dismissed for 12.
Brief Scores:
Chennai Super Kings 103/9 in 20 overs (Shivam Dube 31 not out, Vijay Shankar 29; Sunil Narine 3-13, Harshit Rana 2-16) lost to Kolkata Knight Riders 107/2 in 10.1 overs (Sunil Narine 44, Quinton de Kock 23; Noor Ahmad 1-8 Anshul Kamboj 1-19) by eight wickets.
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