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KKR enter playoffs with today’s win, Mumbai Indians have nearly no chance

Avishkar GovardhaneOctober 7, 20210 Comment0501

KKR seal the final Playoffs Spot

Unless Mumbai Indians pull off a miracle even more miraculous than their great comeback of 2014, Kolkata Knight Riders have sealed the fourth and final playoffs spot in IPL 2021. On another Sharjah pitch with treacherous low bounce, Knight Riders enjoyed the perfect game on Thursday – a solid opening stand to ensure they’d get to a competitive total after being sent in, a series of cameos from their middle order to lift them to the season’s best total on Sharjah’s ground, and a clinical bowling display to keep Rajasthan Royals to their second successive sub-100 total.

They might have preferred to chase given all the net-run-rate permutations, but this route suited them just fine too. They began the day with an NRR of 0.294, and their 86-run win lifted it to 0.480. Mumbai, who are on -0.048, will have to defeat Sunrisers Hyderabad by a ridiculous margin on Friday to cover that gap.

How much is the gap? They’ll need to win by 171 runs if they bat first. And if they lose the toss and bowl, they’ll have no chance of making up their NRR deficit. The Knight Riders don’t just have a foot in the playoffs, they have everything but their trailing little toe in them.

RCB will look for second place, but even that’s highly improbable on NRR to overtake CSK. By the look of the current situation, Qualifier 1 is DC v CSK in Dubai, Eliminator – RCB v KKR in Sharjah. We will tell you what exactly it is tomorrow.

Sanju Samson | Losing Captain : “I think to be very honest it was a better wicket. It was staying a little low with the new ball but it was a better wicket. 171 was chaseable on this wicket. I think we wanted to get a good start. We needed a powerful powerplay.

We wanted to execute whatever we planned but we didn’t execute. I think if you look at the whole season, we have gone through many challenges. We showed character though and am proud of the boys. We won some close games and lost some easy ones. We need to play a better standard of cricket to win more games in this tournament.

Everyone came up with positive vibes, People were ready to go out there and win games for us. Being the skipper, I changed the way I look at my innings. It was always about thinking about the match situations. I would have loved to win more games despite scoring a lot of runs.”

Eoin Morgan | Winning Captain : “Losing the toss and having to set was a difficult challenge. Venkatesh Iyer and Shubman Gill have been the shining lights for us in the second half. I thought we were brilliant to take the opportunities. If you got too hard too early here, you could get out.

I thought our batters timed their assault very well. Shakib coming in and performing has made missing Andre Russell a little bit easier, because Russ is a genuine batter and bowler. We knew he recovers quickly, so we are assessing day by day. We did everything we had to do.”