Kolkata Knight Riders starts their IPL 2021 campaign with a comprehensive win against Sunrisers Hyderabad. They beat SRH by 10 runs to start their campaign.

Sunrisers Hyderabad won the toss and elected to bowl first. But KKR batsmen were on their top today. KKR opener Nitish Rana [80 of 56] and Rahul Tripathi [53 of 29] set the stage. Later Dinesh Karthik’s blistering knock[22 of 9] helped KKR to set a big total of 187.

SRH lost early wickets while chasing. Both of their openers were gone in a low score. Later Manish Pandey[61 of 44] and Jonny Bairstow[55 of 40] tried their best but that was not enough.

After the match, SRH captain David Warner said, “I didn’t think there were that many runs on this wicket. They adapted really well, had a good partnership. We failed to execute the first ball of most overs and then conceded a lot at the end.”

KKR captain Eoin Morgan was delighted with his side’s all-around performance. He said, “Delighted. The build-up to the tournament has been pretty good. In the camp that we had pre-tournament, the guys gelled well. Never quite sure what performance they will produce. Today was quite magnificent the way the guys batted. Guys at the top of the order. Nitish and Tripathi were absolutely outstanding and set up the game for our middle order to play in the manner we want to play. Certainly the bowling, we couldn’t have asked for a better start.”

KKR batsman Nitish Rana was named Man of the Match.