Kolkata Knight Riders took a massive step towards booking their spot in the IPL 2024 playoffs with a seven-wicket victory over Delhi Capitals on Monday. Phil Salt played a blinder to make short work of the run chase after brilliant bowling performances from Varun Chakaravarthy and Vaibhav Arora. The win means that KKR have 12 points from 9 matches with a Net Run Rate of 1.096 – the best in the competition till now. They are second in the IPL 2024 points table and on the other hand, Delhi Capitals are sixth with 10 points from 11 matches with a NRR of -0.442.

Kolkata Knight Riders notched up a comfortable seven-wicket win over Delhi Capitals.

Opting to bat first, Delhi Capitals were stopped at 153/9 by KKR’s disciplined bowlers. The home team completed the chase of 154 with 21 balls to spare.

While batting, KKR raced to 79 for no loss in the power play with Phil Salt (68 off 33 balls) taking the DC bowling attack to the cleaners.

Earlier, Delhi Capitals scored 67 runs in the power play while losing three wickets. However, the visitors simply caved in after the dismissal of their skipper Rishabh Pant (27 off 20 balls).

Batting at number nine, spinner Kuldeep Yadav chipped in with an unbeaten 35 off 26 balls. Among KKR bowlers, spinner Varun Chakaravarthy finished with excellent figures of 3/16 in four overs, while the returning Vaibhav Arora too impressed, an unplayable delivery getting him the wicket of Shai Hope.

“Considering the last few matches, 200 was a par score. After the powerplay the pitch started helping the spinners, was tacky. We got a fair idea as to how it played and to tackle the tackiness. Narine still does not attend those meetings but Salt is always there, gives us his inputs and it’s pure bliss to see him coming up and doing all this,” KKR skipper Shreyas Iyer said at the post-match presentation.

(With PTI inputs)