The 13th match of the IPL 2023 between Gujarat Titans (GT) and Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) saw an astounding finish thanks to Rinku Singh, who rewrote history with his bat, handing KKR a win out of nowhere.
GT was captained in this match by Rashid Khan after Hardik Pandya missed out due to illness. He won the toss and chose to bat first. Thanks to Vijay Shankar’s 63* in 24 balls (5 sixes, 4 fours) and Sai Sudharsan’s 53 in 38 balls, GT managed to put up 204/4 in 20 overs. Sunil Narine picked 3/33 for KKR.
In reply, Venkatesh Iyer’s 83 in 40 balls with 8 fours and five sixes was the foundation of the KKR innings. He found an able partner in Nitish Rana (45) to stabilize the innings after few early wickets.
But then Rashid Khan came into action and picked an amazing hat-trick, removing Andre Russell, Sunil Narine and Shardul Thakur in the 16th over to put GT firmly on the winning path.
It all came down to the last over where 29 runs were needed to win the match, thanks to Rinku Singh hitting Josh Little for a six and a four in the 19th over. Umesh Yadav did his bit by giving Rinku the strike on the first ball of the 20th over bowled by Yash Dayal.
Then Rinku took Dayal to cleaners as he hit him for five sixes, scoring 30 runs to give KKR an unexpected win by 3 wickets. He remained unbeaten on 48 in 21 balls with one four and 6 sixes.
The cricket fraternity was left in awe thanks to Rinku Singh’s batting and lauded the youngster on Twitter.
Here are the tweets:
