Live Report - Kolkata Knight Riders vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru - KKR win a thriller

What a final over. Karn Sharma sends Mitchell Starc top of the table for boundaries given away this IPL season. Forty-four times he's been sent packing. 17 of those have gone clean over the fence. Only Nortje and Markande have given up more sixes (18 each).

With the match slipping away, Starc produces a wicket. He goes pace on and into the blockhole because that's how he's become a world-beater. And Karn Sharma's brave little cameo ends as he's caught and bowled.

RCB go to the final ball needing 3 off 1. They were flirting with a super over. Racing to get a two. Ramandeep Singh's throw is awful. It's lacking in pace. It's way off the stumps. Phil Salt has to grab it and then throw his whole body at the stumps to break em and somehow its enough. We were inches away from a Super Over.

Dre Russ strikes. He's got three wickets today.

RCB need 21 off 6

Harshit Rana has been bowling all the pressure overs for KKR ever since he stopped SRH and Heinrich Klaasen.

He's been trusting his slower balls to do the job in the death and once again they do not disappoint.

The length is there for Prabhudessai to get under and launch it.

But the pace isn't. And putting it back on the ball is never as easy as it seems. KKR are into the tail.

DK is still out there though.

Two wickets in the over for Dre Russ and its both of the half-centurions in the hut for RCB.

This game has changed.

Sunil Narine backs it up with a double-wicket over of his own

Rajat Patidar has found himself again. India rate him very highly because of his work with the A team, playing against all the world's fringe talent. That's how he broke into the Test team and while he was there he did look the part. He seemed to have a good game off both front and back foot. He didn't seem fazed by high pace and he was really good against spin, using the crease well to get into good positions, whether it was shifting back, or pushing forward.

The problem was he was being dismissed for low scores and there were others who were equally talented and equally prolific at the lower levels waiting for a turn. Sarfaraz Khan took his place and scored a Test fifty on debut and that was that. It looked like missing his chance at Test level had messed with his head. A great strength of his batting is the minimalism involved. Patidar doesn't move a whole lot but his weight transfer is always on point. For parts of that Test series against England and here in the IPL, it looked like Patidar was not getting into his shots, like he was half-hearted.

Patidar in the Tests against England: 32 and 9. 5 and 0. 17 and 0
Patidar in the IPL 2024: 0, 18, 3, 29, DNB, 50, 9 and 52*

Today, he's looked much better, peaking in the 10th and 11th overs, where he was smashing Suyash Sharma and Sunil Narine around like nobody's business.

Will Jacks, on the back of that takedown of Mitchell Starc, has fired himself up to his first IPL fifty. He's needed only 29 balls to get there.

His wagon wheel is instructive. Plenty of runs down the ground and over midwicket. Its typical of a tall batter with a strong front foot game. It is also an indictment on the KKR bowling. They've allowed him to get underneath the ball way too many times.

This was Starc's second over today, the last of the powerplay, and he bowled length. He allowed the batter every chance to get under it. And Will Jacks kept saying thank you.

RCB's chances of victory, which were 9.07% at the start of that over, jumped to 22.48% by the end of it.

He had hit two sixes and one four in five balls. A greater willingness to hit over the top has been helping Virat Kohli score quicker and be a bigger threat in the powerplay. So taking him down is a big deal. It happens off a full toss. A slower ball that makes him lose his shape and pop a catch to the bowler Harshit Rana. But KKR do not celebrate. They're expecting the on-field decision to be overruled. Because it was a full toss and it looked over waist high.

Replays indicate that was the case but only because Kohli was batting out of his crease and he was reaching well in front of his body. The square leg umpire gave it out saying the ball was dipping. This new system put in place by HawkEye, where they measure the height of a batter up to his waist, log it in the system, and then check the height of the ball against it, rules Kohli out and he is livid. He starts walking off and then walks right back to the umpires and tells them off. He's angry. Really angry. Even his opening partner Faf du Plessis is pleading his case. Their confusion is understandable because at point of contact, the ball was above Kohli's waist, but waist-high no-balls are judged according to the arc of the ball when it reaches the batting crease. At that point, the projection says it had dipped below Kohli's waist: 0.92 m vs 1.04m

The frequency of overs with 20-plus runs have gone up big time in IPL 2024 - 4.85 % of total overs bowled this year have yielded 20-plus runs, by far the highest for any IPL edition (2.61 % in 2023 was the previous highest). 67 overs have gone for 20-plus runs in this year's IPL, which is already third-most in an edition behind the 75 in 2023 and 72 in 2022.

Royal Challengers Bengaluru have been on the receiving end often - 15 of the 152 overs they bowled this year have gone for 20-plus runs. These are already the most number of 20-plus runs overs conceded by any team in an IPL season, while Sunrisers Hyderabad (13 out of 140 in 2024) is second. Sunrisers have compensated it by hitting as many as 20 overs for 20-plus runs this year, four more than any franchise in an IPL edition. Royal Challengers have had only three such overs with the bat, the joint-fewest by any team in 2024.

It's been a fun little innings to watch. KKR have made a lot of running, with Phil Salt hitting 10 of the first 13 balls he faced to the boundary and getting out off the 14th looking for another boundary.

RCB didn't wilt though. They've actually been exceptional, especially against Sunil Narine and Andre Russell, tying them down with yorkers and off-pace deliveries. This back and forth is represented well in how the last over of the innings progresses.

Power from KKR. Skill from RCB. And the desperately small margins there are for a bowler in T20 cricket. Yash Dayal recovered very well after going for two boundaries in the first two balls. But that last one going for four ruins it.

Dre Russ walked in during the 14th over. This is the 18th and he's still only 11 off 13 with only one hit to the boundary.

Yash Dayal was able to sneak a free hit past him for just one run. And now Green is keeping him quiet by going nose and toes. His yell of disappointment just now, as his pull shot found the fielder, was lounder than the contact between bat and ball. Usually, there's nothing louder than the sound of his bat hitting ball.

It's his first in the IPL since May 2022. Missed last season with injury. Been a slow start to this one. But today, when his team needed his experience to bridge them from a super start to right now into the death overs, he's stood up. Now KKR really need to go because Shreyas himself was worried at the toss that the pitch would get better for batting as the conditions cool down. That was the plan as he went after Cam Green in the 18th over, but a flat, hard, powerful strike is caught by Faf du Plessis running to his right at long-off.

Some fast bowlers run in so smoothly that the speed they bowl at is a surprise. Like Jofra Archer or Michael Holding. Others like Lockie Ferguson and Brett Lee charge into the crease like they want to set it on fire.

All that pace went against him in the powerplay when his first over cost 28 runs. So now he's going slower balls. A knuckle ball that bounces way more than Rinku Singh expects results in him being caught off a pull shot at short fine. It's a wonderfully disguised knuckle ball too. Because when he loads up in his action, his fingers are upright. Then he switches grips and holds the ball by basically just the nails. It's lovely skill. Ian Bishop spoke about this, about how far bowlers are going to disguise their variations.

KKR's first six overs: 75 for 3, 11x4s and 3x6s.
KKR's next six overs: 51 for 1, 6x4s and 1x6.

Karn Sharma, who was brought in for this game, and Cameron Green, who was brought back after an indifferent start to the tournament, are the reasons for the runs drying up.

Karn produced the first boundary-less over in the 10th. And Green helped him out by taking a glorious, back-pedalling, leaping, one-handed catch earlier in the piece to dismiss Angkrish Raghuvanshi. From there, he's come on to bowl and he's continued to make good use of his height, targeting Rinku Singh with short-pitched bowling and keeping him quiet. This head-to-head at the end of 12 overs: six balls, five of which were dots or singles.

Problem is Shreyas can't really work on improving those figures right now because his team is in trouble. Four down in the ninth over. He's going to have to hold an end up and delay the entry point for Andre Russell because this is too many deliveries for him to negotiate and still be the threat that he is.

They've given up 75 runs, which is largely because Salt took down Ferguson in the fourth over and there was every chance that things could have gone completely wrong from that point on. The momentum was with KKR. But they've snatched it back. They didn't wilt like in the previous games. There's some mettle there.

This has been special from RCB. Sunil Narine, who has been hitting boundaries for fun, who is coming off his first T20 century, had only one scoring shot in the first eight balls that he faced. Every bowler from Mohammed Siraj in the first over to Yash Dayal now were clear with what they wanted to do. Bowl yorkers. On leg stump. Tuck him up. Give him no room. Build pressure. Profit from it. The only snag in that plan was they forgot about the other guy and Phil Salt smashed them all around the park

They managed to get rid of Salt - with no small amount of luck because the ball that got him caught at deep midwicket was perfectly hittable for six - and now they've got Narine too. And this time it's clever stuff. Dayal goes back of the hand slower ball. Power-hitters need pace coming onto the bat. Take that away from them and everything from their balance to their bat-swing becomes a problem. An under-fire bowling attack is holding its own against one of this IPL season's biggest batting powerhouses.

Most of the dots here are Narine. He's 4 off 11. And he got all of those runs with one scoring shot. But his partner is refusing to let that pressure tell.

Phil Salt is 48 not out at the end of four overs. He's hit 10 of the 13 balls he's faced so far to the boundary, including every one of this over from Lockie Ferguson.

In this interview that I and my little brother did with him earlier in the season, he explained his batting philosophy, particularly why he looks to go big early and why he doesn't need time to get set. He had the fastest IPL fifty in 2024 for the taking. But going for another boundary, he's been caught at deep midwicket. 48 off 14 with seven fours and three sixes.

KKR are playing with five overseas players this season. Because Sunil Narine.

This little nugget comes from Tom Moody and Mitchell McClenaghan on ESPNcricinfo's T20 Time:Out show and they're right. Usually, you have to settle for Chris Gayle or Jasprit Bumrah. It is very rare that you get them both.

This season, Narine is among the highest run-getters this tournament and he has always been a dead-on banker with the ball. RCB, though, have done well. They made the pinch hitter wait for eight balls and 2.2 overs to get his first boundary.

Virat Kohli was the one leading the RCB team talk this afternoon. And then as the team spilled onto the Eden, he went straight up to the umpire, handed over his orange cap, picked up the white ball and started windmilling his hands as though he was going to open the bowling and the crowd absolutely loved it. RCB are in the doldrums but they have a player who knows how to work a crowd, who knows how to get the most of that 12th man and that intangible often has a say in the way the game goes.

Faf du Plessis says Eden Gardens is a chasing ground, which is why he is braving fielding in 42C weather. He adds that getting wickets in the powerplay is an area they'd like to get better on. Three changes: Green and Siraj comes back. Karn Sharma comes in. He finishes off saying if they do a couple of things well, they'll get the confidence back and take that momentum forward. Here are both playing XIs and the impact subs

The KKR captain Shreyas Iyer thinks the pitch might be slow to bat right now. They would've preferred to chase as well. Unchanged team. There is concern that he might have lost a huge toss. He's expecting the wicket to change later in the evening when it cools down.