Kolkata Knight Riders and its fans would have had a sigh of relief as Sunrisers Hyderabad got past the 64 run mark while chasing a humongous target of 236 against Mumbai Indians in their last league match of the Indian Premier League 2021. Getting to 64 was crucial from the point of view of KKR as their Playoffs qualification hopes depended on it.
Prior to the start of the match between Mumbai and Hyderabad, Mumbai needed to win it by a margin of at least 171 runs to topple KKR from the fourth position in the points table. Thus, when Mumbai scored 235, the target for KKR was to see SRH get past 64.
When the team from Kolkata won their last game against Rajasthan Royals by a huge margin of 86 runs on Thursday, October 07, they further pushed their net run rate ahead and made it difficult for Mumbai to catch up, who even if win their last game (ongoing) against SRH, would have a maximum of 14 points only, which would be equal to KKR’s.
But KKR’s net run rate of +0.587 is the best in the league among all teams and thus Mumbai who were on a net run rate of -0.048 before their last game, needed to win their last game by a margin of 171 runs or more. They did everything well to get as many runs as possible, but even 235 was not going to be enough.