After Royal Challengers Bangalore made it to the finals of IPL 2016, the team that would face Gujarat Lions in the Qualifier 2 would be decided in this match. Both KKR and SRH have done well in patches and both of them will fight it out to grab a spot in the Qualifier 2 at the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium.

Gautam Gambhir won the toss and chose to field as they the KKR team had done consistently well while chasing. Shikhar Dhawan fell early and then it was the partnership between Warner and Henriques that set the platform for the middle order batsmen to play their game. Yuvraj Singh played an important inning of 44 runs in 30 balls to ensure that SRH posted a good total. At the end of 20 overs, SRH set a target of 163 for KKR to win Eliminator match.

When KKR came in to chase, all their Top 3 batsmen (Gambhir, Uthappa, and Munro) got a good start but couldn’t convert as their wickets fell at regular intervals. Manish Pandey and Suryakumar Yadav did well to stabilize the KKR innings but Yadav got out when the team wanted to accelerate. Soon followed Manish Pandey there was the end to a dream of being the 3rd time champions this season as KKR lost the match by 22 runs and SRH play GL in the 2nd qualifier.

Here’s a look at some of the interesting numbers and stats from this match –

Best Opening Pair – Warner and Dhawan become the first opening pair in the history of IPL to 1500+ runs for their opening stand. Gambhir and Uthappa are in the second position with 1478 runs.

Running Issues – Deepak Hooda has been run-out 5 times in this season of IPL. No other player has been run-out 5 or more times in a single season of IPL.

4K Club for Yuvraj – Yuvraj Singh has now scored over 4000 runs in T20 cricket. He is the 10th Indian player to do so.

Consistent Gambhir – Gambhir has now scored over 500 runs in 3 seasons of IPL. Only Virat Kohli has scored more with 4 seasons of 500+ runs.

Captains Identical Innings – Both captain, Gambhir and Warner scored 28 runs off 28 balls in this match. This is the first ever occurrence of such an instance in IPL.

Mohit Camma

Cricket enthusiast