IPL 2023: Cricket fraternity reacts as Venkatesh Iyer’s 104 powers KKR to 185/6 against MI

Before Iyer's ton, Brendon McCullum had scored 158* for KKR in the very 1st match of IPL 2008.

Venkatesh Iyer hit an amazing century for Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in their ongoing IPL 2023 game against Mumbai Indians (MI) which is being played on April 16, 2023, at the Wankhede Stadium.  KKR is placed 5^th on the points table with 2 wins in 4 matches, while MI is 9^th with one win in 3 matches.

MI is being led by Suryakumar Yadav in absence of Rohit Sharma who is down with a stomach bug. Yadav won the toss and chose to bowl first. For MI, Arjun Tendulkar and Duan Jansen made their IPL debuts.

Rahmanullah Gurbaz and N Jagadeesan fell early to Cameron Green and Piyush Chawla respectively. Nitish Rana, the KKR captain also fell for five runs, being caught by Ramandeep Singh off Hrithik Shokeen.

IPL 2023: WATCH- Hrithik Shokeen’s send-off to Nitish Rana angers the KKR skipper as they duel verbally

However, Venkatesh Iyer was playing in his zone and hammered the MI bowlers to all parts of the Wankhede Stadium. This included hitting Riley Meredith for two back-to-back sixes.

Finally, he reached his maiden IPL and T20 century in the 17^th over off 49 balls. It was the second century in this IPL 2023 season after Harry Brook’s 100* for SRH.

Incidentally, this was only the second century in Indian Premier League by a Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) batter. The last batter to make a century for KKR was Brendon McCullum, who smashed 158* against Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in the very first match of the IPL back in 2008 in Bengaluru.

Meanwhile, after Iyer’s dismissal, MI managed to pull things back as KKR finished on 185/6, with Andre Russell making 21* in 11 balls. 

The cricket fraternity was all appreciative of Venkatesh Iyer’s brilliant knock in Wankhede and lauded him on Twitter.

Here are the tweets: