Kolkata Knight Riders’ Venkatesh Iyer slammed a magnificent hundred against Mumbai Indians in their group stage match held yesterday at the Wankhede Stadium. The left-hander smashed 104 runs off 51 balls at a strike rate of 203.92.
Opting to ball first, Mumbai Indians had a wonderful start with debutant Arjun Tendulkar and Cameron Green bowling in tandem. However, Venkatesh who came at one down had other plans. The Southpaw started attacking all the Mumbai bowlers. But, he didn’t get any support from the other end.
The left-hander’s innings were laced with 6 boundaries and 9 strikes that went over the boundary line. With this century, Venkatesh Iyer became the second-ever player to hit a century in the IPL from Kolkata Knight Riders. The first was Brendon McCullum’s iconic innings of 158* runs innings at the first-ever IPL match at M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore.
Riding on Venkatesh Iyer’s century, the Kolkata-based franchisee posted 185 runs for the fall of 6 wickets on the board. However, the score wasn’t enough as Mumbai Indians chased the score comfortably winning the match by 5 wickets. The Mumbai-based franchisee’s innings saw an excellent half-century from Ishan Kishan and counter-attacking innings from Suryakumar Yadav and Tilak Verma.
Kolkata Knight Riders who are currently 5th on the points table with 2 wins will face Delhi Capitals next at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on 20th April.
