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Ahead of the final match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 between Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Sunday, former India cricketer Anil Kumble showered praise on KKR and said they have been the all-round team in the tournament.
KKR finished the league stage on the top of the points table with nine wins, three losses and two no results, giving them 20 points. They earned a direct spot in the final by defeating SRH in the qualifier one. SRH got a second shot at the title in qualifier two against Rajasthan Royals (RR) and they made the most of it by defeating the 'Men in Pink' by 36 runs. Speaking to JioCinema, Kumble hailed the Knight Riders skipper Shreyas Iyer and said he has been calm and used his resources well in the ongoing T20 tournament. The former cricketer added that Shreyas used the best out of Andre Russel with the bat and ball. "KKR has been the all-round team, with the ball or with the bat. You name it, you have the players with Rinku Singh yet to chip in. When you have a side with explosive batters, a bowler like Starc who is coming into his form, we saw his impact in the last game and Shreyas Iyer. Even he has done exceptionally well as a captain, he has been calm and used his resources well. He got the best out of Russel and they have the firepower with both the bat and ball," Kumble said. He further added that both Kolkata and Hyderabad have redefined how to play in the powerplay. "Both these teams have redefined how to go about in the powerplay, and we saw that. This is a surface that requires you to utilize the powerplay and we saw how SRH did that. Two teams that have done well throughout the tournament dictated the terms right from ball one consistently and no wonder they are playing the finals in Chennai on Sunday," he added. Sunrisers Hyderabad Squad: Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram, Nitish Reddy, Heinrich Klaasen (Wk), Abdul Samad, Pat Cummins (C), Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan, Jaydev Unadkat, Shahbaz Ahmed, Umran Malik, Sanvir Singh, Glenn Phillips, Mayank Markande, Mayank Agarwal, Washington Sundar, Anmolpreet Singh, Upendra Yadav, Jhatavedh Subramanyan, Vijayakanth Viyaskanth, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Marco Jansen, Akash Maharaj Singh. Kolkata Knight Riders Squad: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (Wk), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (C), Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Vaibhav Arora, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy, Anukul Roy, Manish Pandey, Nitish Rana, Srikar Bharat, Sherfane Rutherford, Dushmantha Chameera, Chetan Sakariya, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sakib Hussain, Suyash Sharma, Allah Ghazanfar. (ANI)
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