IPL 2023 SRH vs KKR: Knights led by Rana, Rinku beat Sunrisers by 5 runs

After winning the toss, KKR decided to bat at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad.

Opening for KKR, the batsmen could not handle the SRH bowling attack and were dismissed in the initial overs.

Jason Roy (19), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (0), and Venkatesh Iyer (7) were dismissed by SRH’s Karthik Tyagi and Marco Jansen in the powerplay itself.

Nitish Rana (42) and Rinku Singh (46) then stitched together a partnership to give KKR a decent scoreboard on which to challenge the home team. However, after his dismissal, no other player scored more runs and KKR could only manage 171 runs in 20 overs losing 9 wickets.

For SRH, Marco Jansen and T Natarajan took two wickets each, while Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Karthik Tyagi, Aiden Markram and Mayank Markande picked up one wicket each.

Chasing the target of 172 runs in Hyderabad may not look difficult, but Sunrisers openers failed to impress this time too and could not give a good start.

Mayank Agarwal (18), Abhishek Sharma (9) and Rahul Tripathi (20) went to the pavilion in the powerplay itself. In the 7th over, KKR’s AS Roy showed the way to the pavilion to power hitter Harry Brook.

However, skipper Aiden Markram (41) and Heinrich Klaasen (36) stitched a much-needed partnership. But he too was caught by Vaibhav Arora and Shardul Thakur in the 17th and 14th overs.

Later wickets kept falling. By the end of 20 overs, Sunrisers could only manage 166 runs and lost by 5 runs.

Vaibhav Arora and Shardul Thakur took two wickets each for KKR, while Harshit Rana, Andre Russell, Anukul Roy and Varun Chakravarthy took one wicket each.

If we look at the points table, KKR is now at number 8 after winning 4 out of 10 matches played. While SRH have lost 6 out of 9 matches played and are at the 9th position.