In the 19th match of the IPL 2023, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) hosted Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in their own home of Eden Gardens in Kolkata on April 14, 2023. It was a crucial match for the SRH franchise, who came into this tie with only one win in three matches.
KKR captain Nitish Rana won the toss and chose to bowl first, going in with an unchanged team. SRH, on the other hand, brought in Abhishek Sharma for Washington Sundar.
Meanwhile, Andre Russell gave KKR a perfect start with the wickets of Mayank Agarwal for 9 runs and then dangerous Rahul Tripathi who made 9 runs as well, hitting two boundaries in his first over itself. But Harry Brook continued to score runs with confidence and was joined by SRH captain Aiden Markram.
Markram made 50 in 26 balls before falling to Varun Chakravarthy and was followed by Abhishek Sharma, who despite batting out of position, scored 32 in 17 balls with 3 fours and 2 sixes.
But it was Harry Brook, who kept thumping the KKR bowlers all over the Eden Gardens hitting 12 fours and 3 sixes in his knock, and finally reached the 100-run mark in 55 balls despite being tired a lot due to heat in Kolkata. This is the first century of the ongoing IPL 2023.
Heinrich Klaasen hit 16* in 6 balls as SRH finished on 228/4 in 20 overs. For KKR, Andre Russell with 3/22 was the pick of the bowlers, though he had to go off the field after bowling 2.1 overs.
The cricket fraternity on Twitter lauded Harry Brook for his special innings under pressure as he had scores of 13, 3, and 13 in his last three IPL innings and proved his critics wrong with this brilliant knock.
Here are the tweets:
