Mitchell Starc has justified his hefty price tag once again. The Kolkata Knight Riders pace spearhead produced an unplayable delivery to castle Sunrisers Hyderabad's in-form opener Abhishek Sharma in the very first over of the Indian Premier League 2024 final in Chennai on Sunday, May 26. (Match Blog | Full Coverage)
The fifth ball of the match was a length delivery that pitched on middle stump. But Starc's brilliant seam presentation ensured that the ball swung away late, beating Abhishek all ends up and hitting the top of off stump. Experts gushed about the fabulous delivery, with many calling it the "ball of the tournament". You can watch the video of the jaffa below.
Earlier, SRH won the toss and opted to bat first against Shreyas Iyer's KKR. Hyderabad skipper Pat Cummins said he was not expecting dew and that is why he decided to bat first. Iyer, on the other hand, said he was looking to bowl first anyway.
Playing XIs
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen(w), Shahbaz Ahmed, Pat Cummins(c), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Jaydev Unadkat, T Natarajan.
Impact Subs: Umran Malik, Glenn Phillips, Mayank Markande, Abdul Samad, Washington Sundar.
Kolkata Knight Riders: Rahmanullah Gurbaz(w), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer(c), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy
Impact Subs: Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Nitish Rana, KS Bharat, Sherfaine Rutherford.
The last time the two teams met was in Qualifier 1, where KKR had easily defeated SRH to book their tickets to the final. Earlier in the season, KKR had beaten SRH by four runs in the only league-stage encounter between the two teams.
KKR finished the league stage on top of the table and booked a spot in the final at the first time of asking.
