Ahmedabad

Kolkata Knight Riders' Rinku Singh five consecutive sixes in the last over took the win away from Gujarat Titans at Narendra Modi Stadium on Sunday.

Despite taking the first IPL 2023 hat-trick from Rashid Khan, Rinku Singh's last over performance overshadowed the match. Gujarat's Venkatesh Iyer had played a brilliant knock 83 in 40 balls which brought Kolkata closer to the chase.

Put to chase, Kolkata's first wicket went early in the 3rd over as Mohammed Shami sent Rahmanullah Gurbaz back to the pavilion who was batting at 15 in 12 balls. Irish bowler Joshua Little hit another blow to Kolkata by getting the wicket of Narayan Jagadeesan at 6 balls in 8 balls in 3.6 overs.

Struggling after losing two early wickets, KKR had put 43 runs on the board with Venkatesh Iyer batting at 18 in 13 balls and Nitish Rana at 3 in 3 balls after the end of the Powerplay.

At the end of 9 overs, Venkatesh and Nitish contributed fifty-run partnerships for Kolkata to come closer to a massive run chase.

KKR was at 86/2 in 10 overs with Venkatesh at 39 in 22 balls and Nitish at 25 in 18 balls.

Batting strongly in the middle, Ventakesh reached to his fifty-hitting boundary in 26 balls.

The duo of Ventakesh and Nitish accelerated their gears in the 12th and 13th over where Rashid Khan and Yash Dayal went expensive with 13 and 17 runs respectively.

Just after the impressive 100-run partnership of the duo, Gujarat made the comeback in the match when Little sent back Nitish, who was looking good scoring 45 in 29 balls.

Venkatesh went full out against Little in the 16th over as he hit one six and two four. Little went for 17 runs turning the table in Kolkata's favour.

Kolkata reached to 150-run mark reached in 15.2 overs.

In the 15.5 over, Gujarat got the valuable breakthrough of Venkatesh by Alzarri Joseph. Ventakesh scored a brilliant knock of 83 in 40 balls.

GT stand-in skipper Rashid Khan, with his exceptional bowling, took the first hat-trick of the IPL 2023 hitting Andre Russell, Sunil Narine and Shardul Thakur respectively. He firmed the position of the Titans in the game.

Rinku Singh by hitting five consecutive sixes did unprecedentedly and chased down the massive total put by the Gujarat Titans. Yash Dayal gave away the game by being hit for 31 runs in the last over.

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Earlier, with an explosive batting by Vijay Shankar at the death over, after Sudharsan set the platform, Gujarat Titans posted a total of 204/4 against Kolkata Knight Riders.