Wonder man from Afghanistan Rashid Khan produced an all-round effort to guide Sunrisers Hyderabad to a 13-run win over Kolkata Knight Riders in the second qualifier of the Indian Premier League on Friday at Eden Gardens. Hyderabad will now face Chennai Super Kings in the final on Sunday at Wankhede Stadium.
Rashid’s late cameo of the 34 runs in 10 balls propelled Hyderabad to a score of 174/7 in 20 overs. Then Rashid was exceptional with the ball taking 3/19 from his four overs to guide his side to their second IPL final appearance.
Besides his exploits with the bat and ball, Rashid grabbed two important catches at deep mid-wicket in the final over of the innings to emerge as the stand-out performer.
In their pursuit of 175, KKR were off to a scintillating start scoring 40 off 3.2 overs before Sunil Narine perished to Siddharth Kaul with Carlos Brathwaite taking an easy catch.
But by then Narine and Chris Lynn (48 off 31) had already done the initial damage as they went hammer and tongs against the Sunrisers bowlers from the word go. Narine made 26 off 13 balls with the help of four boundaries and one six before departing.
But that didn’t stop Lynn and Nitish Rana (22) as the duo continued to bat aggressively and picked up boundaries and sixes at will to take KKR to 81 for one after eight overs. Just when it looked KKR were on course, four quick wickets brought Sunrisers back into the match.
First Rana was run out in the ninth over and then a struggling Robin Uthappa was cleaned up by Rashid in the 11th over as the batsman went for an expansive reverse sweep.
To make matters worse for KKR, skipper Dinesh Karthik was castled by Shakib Al Hasan in the 12th over before Rashid caught Lynn in front of the wicket in the next over as the Australian went for a sweep.
Rashid then came back an over later to dismiss dangerous Andre Russell as the West Indian edged a googly straight to Shikhar Dhawan at slip as KKR slipped to 118/6.
Piyush Chawla scored a run-a-ball 12 before getting out but it was young Shubman Gill (30) who kept KKR in the hunt, hitting Kaul over mid-off boundary in the last ball off the penultimate over to bring down the equation to 19 off last over.
Shivam Mavi then hit Brathwaite for a boundary in the first ball off the final over before the West Indian picked up Mavi and Gill with consecutive deliveries to seal the win for Hyderabad.
Earlier, in their bid for a place in the final for the third time, KKR bowlers responded to Karthik’s decision to bowl first as they never allowed Sunrisers batsmen to break free initially.
Kuldeep Yadav stole the limelight with a 2/29 spell that included the prized wicket of Kane Williamson (3), while Narine (1/24) was once again at his tidy best conceding just two runs in the 17th over.
But Sunrisers snatched the momentum scoring 50 runs in the last three overs with wily Afghan spinner Rashid making the difference. Rashid stepped on the gas in Prasidh Krishna’s final over with two sixes that yielded 24 runs. Krishna finished 0/56 from his four overs to undo all the good work done by Kuldeep and Narine.