Rinku Singh struck an unbeaten 83 and held five catches as Kolkata Knight Riders beat Lucknow Super Giants in a Super Over at the Ekana Stadium on Sunday, after Mohammed Shami’s last-ball six tied the scores at 155 in an IPL match that swung on Kolkata’s late hitting and Sunil Narine’s spin. Rinku rescued Kolkata from 93-7 with a 51-ball innings that included four successive sixes in the final over of their innings. Narine then took two wickets in three balls in the Super Over to limit Lucknow to one run, before Rinku hit the winning shot.
The match turned on two short, high-leverage passages of play rather than long phases of dominance. Lucknow’s left-arm quick Mohsin Khan, an uncapped Indian, took 5-23, the best bowling figures of the season, by attacking the stumps and using the slower surface to dismiss Kolkata’s top and middle order in clusters. The three-time champions slid to 93-7 and looked set for a sub-par total before Rinku changed the shape of the innings.
His approach showed the value of waiting for width on a pitch that punished cross-batted hitting early in an innings. He took singles against Mohsin and the spinners, kept Kolkata batting through the overs, then targeted the death bowling once fielders went to the boundary. Four sixes in a row off Kartik Tyagi, who also conceded two no-balls in the same over, lifted Kolkata to 155-7 and gave their bowlers something to defend.
Lucknow’s reply followed the same pattern in reverse. Mitchell Marsh fell for one, leaving Aiden Markram and captain Rishabh Pant to rebuild at a careful pace. Markram made 31 and Pant 42, and both ate up deliveries without accelerating, which forced the lower order into a chase against the required rate.
Tyagi’s earlier mistakes in the final over had given Lucknow a target they could reach with a finisher’s hit, and Shami delivered it. He pulled the last ball for six to tie at 155-8 and drag the contest into a Super Over.
Narine’s role then proved decisive. He bowled tight lines into the rough, took two wickets in three balls and squeezed Lucknow down to one run from the over, the kind of total Kolkata could chase with a single boundary. Rinku, unsurprisingly, finished the job.
The result reshapes the bottom of the table. Lucknow drop to last with six defeats in eight matches, a poor return for a side built around Pant, Marsh and Markram.
“Really happy with the victory,” Kolkata skipper Ajinkya Rahane said. “The way we played after the 16 overs, Rinku’s innings was amazing. That last over and getting the momentum to our side was amazing.”
