Chennai Super Kings (CSK) needed to break the opening partnership and it was a massive collapse that followed as Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) lost eight wickets for 34 runs in the final of IPL 2021. Chasing 193 runs, KKR needed their openers to do what they have been doing throughout the second half of the tournament.
Chennai Super Kings had an opportunity to negate that effect in the second over itself when Josh Hazlewood's short delivery on stumps was too close to cut for Venkatesh Iyer and he could get only as far as MS Dhoni's gloves but the skipper in trying to take it with reverse cup spilled it and gave him a life.
On the next ball, just to rub on the wounds Iyer smashed a six and just played the way he has throughout the second half. Those cover drives, those flicks were all on show. CSK had another opportunity to dismiss Iyer where Shardul Thakur got Iyer to pull and he got a top edge, Dhoni jumped high but could only get his fingertips to it.
Iyer then hit a couple of sixes off Ravindra Jadeja and brought up his fourth half-century of the season and made CSK pay after Dhoni dropped him.
Iyer got out just after but he did his job scoring 50 runs off just 32 balls. However, it just was a domino effect for the men in purple as one brought two and two brought four as it kept sliding down for the men in purple.
The man with the golden arm, Thakur dismissed Iyer and Nitish Rana in the same over. Josh Hazlewood removed Sunil Narine from the other end and Ravindra Jadeja followed Thakur's footsteps dismissing Dinesh Karthik and Shakib Al Hasan in the same over and he slide just didn't stop.
Thakur picked another dismissing the limping Rahul Tripathi and Hazlewood got rid of skipper Eoin Morgan to dash all the KKR hopes.
