Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) [India], April 27 : Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) pulled off a Super Over thriller against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) in Lucknow on Sunday to stay alive in the race for the playoffs of IPL 2026, and KKR seamer Vaibhav Arora gave the credit for the win to star batter Rinku Singh.
Rinku played an unbeaten knock of 83 runs off 51 balls, including seven fours and five sixes, which helped KKR cross the 150-run mark when asked to bat first.
Speaking during the press conference after the match, Arora said, "We've won the game because of that knock. If it wasn't for that, we wouldn't have got to a total of 155, and that was a decent score on this pitch. He smashed four sixes in the last over, and those proved to be the difference in helping us win the match in the end."
The match went for a Super Over after the last-over heroics from Mohammed Shami, when he hit a six on the last delivery of the 20th over, when seven runs were needed and forced a Super Over.
Sunil Narine came to bowl the Super Over for KKR, and he dismissed Nicholas Pooran and Aiden Markram on the first three deliveries. Rinku Singh hit the winning boundary on the first delivery to win the match for the three-time IPL champions.
When asked about Narine's pick as bowler for Super Over, Arora said, "In the super over, we know our best bowler in the team was Sunil Narine. He's been serving the franchise for so many years, and everyone trusted him blindly with that responsibility. As you witnessed, he dismissed both batters and only let them score one run. We knew we had the advantage with the best bowler in Narine. He's delivered a maiden in a super over in the past. So, there was no one better than him at that time. He restricted them to a solitary run, and it was an easy chance for us then."
It was a low-scoring thriller, and both teams struggled to score on a surface where pace bowlers were getting the assistance. Mohsin Khan of LSG took a five-wicket haul to restrict KKR to 155/7.
Speaking about the pitch, the right-arm KKR pacer said, "The pitch was a little tough, but it was not one of those surfaces where you can't chase down 155. We bowled well as a unit, put the ball in the right areas and only conceded 37 runs in the powerplay and also got a wicket. I got the wicket in the second over, so we had the momentum from the start. After that, we finished the powerplay well, controlled the middle overs, and the spinners kept chipping away with wickets. I believe that we have the best spinners in the IPL. Sunil Narine and Varun Chakaravarthy - they did a great job. By the end, the required run rate had climbed to 10-12 runs per over, and we finished it off well."
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