Losing the Infinity War to win the Endgame: How KKR scripted history at Wankhede

The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) weren't supposed to beat the Mumbai Indians (MI) on Friday. It was as certain as Thanos snapping his fingers in Avengers: Infinity War. 10 seconds into the movie trailer, and you knew it was going to happen.

In the last 16 years, KKR had won just one match at the Wankhede Stadium, in 2012, when their current number three batter, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, was seven.

Since then, they came here as the strongest team in the tournament and lost; they came here as the weakest team, gave a fight, and still lost. They came with their best batting line-ups and lost; with their best bowling lineups and lost.

They dreaded it, ran from it, but destiny arrived all the same. Nine out of 10 times.

Inevitability was in the trailer of this match too. KKR lost their best fast-bowler for the season, Harshit Rana, due to a one-match ban for celebrating a wicket, for a venue that couldn't have been better designed for his skillset.

Heavy dew started to collect at 7 pm IST, which only means one thing in this part of the country -- win the toss, win the match. Shreyas Iyer lost and heard Wankhede roar as Hardik Pandya hurriedly opted to bowl with a sheepish smile.

The KKR skipper showed a good attitude, despite this being his seventh toss loss in 10 games. But attitude isn't enough. He, of all people, would have known that all three of KKR's losses in IPL 2024 had come while defending totals.

In 37 blinks of an eye, KKR were down to 57/5, having lost Sunil Narine, Phil Salt (the top run-scorers), Raghuvanshi, Shreyas, and Rinku Singh before the seventh over. How soft some of those were -- like Rinku's catch back to Piyush Chawla -- gave an impression that the Wankhede baggage was giving them jelly legs.

Desperate and out of options, KKR sent Manish Pandey out as the Impact Player to steady the ship with Venkatesh Iyer. There had been collapses before for KKR too -- more than they'd have liked -- but nothing as serious as this one

"It was the fourth or fifth time Manish had padded up and this time, he actually got to bat," Venkatesh would say later on.

MI had two options. They could have gone for the kill by bringing in Jasprit Bumrah (who has never got Pandey out in IPL) and Gerald Coetzee. Or they could have finished Chawla and Naman Dhir's overs of spin on the gripping track as if telling KKR, "You want to rebuild and not score runs? Do it against our weaker bowlers!"

They went for the latter and like the rest of KKR's evening, it worked amazingly in MI's favor. Manish and Venkatesh rebuilt but overstayed their welcome. In overs 13, 15 and 16, they managed 15 runs in total, as Andre Russell and Ramandeep Singh watched them play and miss slower ones from the dug-out.

Pandey got out and ran to the dug-out in the 17th over, paving the way for the first real moment of hope for KKR as Russell smacked his first ball for a six. Venkatesh did the same two balls later and at 153/6, 190 seemed like a possibility.

But on the last ball of the over it became 153/7, thanks to a horrendous mix-up between Venkatesh and Russell, which saw the latter run out for 7 (2).

As the beach-like dew made Bumrah's reserved overs feel like a genius move, as KKR got bowled out for 169 -- the lowest first-innings score by a visiting team here since 2023 -- it felt like this was the moment of the game.

KKR's biggest game-changer getting run out like that was inevitably going to be the opening line of every match report and every feature (including this one) in the most cliched way possible, speaking about how it "summed up" KKR's day.

But it wasn't the end of KKR's day. The Endgame was still to come.

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Like in the batting, KKR found new heroes with the ball

Akin to the batting's reliance on Narine, Salt and Russell, all of KKR's good bowling performances so far had been led by Vaibhav Arora with the new ball, Harshit with the old, and the spinners leading the charge in the middle.

Mitchell Starc was being outperformed and carried by the two Indian seamers, which had led to a slow deterioration of Shreyas' trust in him. Russell had, before the MI game, spoken about how he was ready for more responsibility with the ball but wasn't getting it because KKR had these many options in their ranks.

In this game, they didn't have that luxury. Apart from missing their death-overs specialist, the Pandey substitution meant KKR couldn't bring in the extra bowler they needed in the second innings. Chetan Sakariya was seen warming up before and during the game, ready for his first chance in the season, but had to miss out.

A lack of trust in Venkatesh with the ball meant KKR had exactly five options: Vaibhav, Starc, Narine, Varun Chakaravarthy and Russell. As the dew laced the pitch in the mid-innings break, the wicket started to skid and became easy to bat on. There was simply no margin for error and no option but to win every key battle.

For the first four overs, it was still not KKR's day. Vaibhav, who had the joint-most wickets in the powerplay before this game, failed to pick even one. Starc derived a false shot from Ishan Kishan but conceded 23 runs in his first two overs.

Shreyas had no option but to bring Chakaravarthy and Narine early, despite neither having a great powerplay record. Chakaravarthy struck on his first ball to get Dhir early -- a stunningly controlled off-break to hit the leg stump -- which set the tone and plan for KKR to not leave the stumps for the rest of the innings.

Narine kept five of his six balls in the next over on the leg-stick to eventually beat Rohit Sharma on the sweep with his extra bounce. The next two overs went for eight runs, with the tight lines creating pressure in the powerplay, leading to Tilak Varma and Nehal Wadhera also falling in the next three, reducing MI to 71/5.

MI knew they had to just rotate the strike against the spinners because KKR were a bowler short but they bowled 16 dots among themselves - 1/3rd of their quota.

"I'll be honest with you, it got really good to bat on in the second innings, it was tough to bat on in the first innings but I think our bowlers deserve a lot of appreciation. You guys won us the game," Venkatesh said in a chat with Starc after the match.

"The spinners in the middle -- it was the fantastic spell of eight overs there which really strangled the innings in the middle and it made it a lot easier for us (the pacers)," Starc replied.

It wasn't eight overs straight of spin, though. Shreyas utilized Russell optimally, bringing him on as soon as a wicket fell and he took out Pandya with a slower one.

He also had two overs of Vaibhav to manage and tried to use one in the 14th, sandwiched between a Narine and a Chakaravarthy over. A no-ball led to Suryakumar getting 20 runs and changing the momentum quickly but because Chakaravarthy was to follow, he could wrest it back by giving away just nine runs.

With Russell-Starc-Russell-Starc-Vaibhav left as the only option for the last five overs against MI's two best hitters against pace, Suryakumar and Tim David, and MI needed 51 runs from 30 balls, it still felt like the hosts' game to lose.

Then the miracle. Russell got Suryakumar out off the most rubbish full-toss he has ever bowled (most probably a slip due to the dew). It was the first slice of luck going KKR's way and they made a whole meal with it.

Starc bowled his best over of the season, conceding just three in the 17th and then took three wickets in four balls in the 19th, to conclude his best-ever spell in a KKR shirt. His tomato-faced crouched fist-bump after cleaning up Gerald Coetzee seemed to be deriving its energy from a downtrodden Pandya, sitting on the sidelines with his palms cupping his face.

Each of KKR's wins so far in IPL 2024 had come on the backs of five to six core players. Venkatesh, Pandey and Starc weren't among them. Their performances on Monday were the unexpected, unplanned events that challenged the inevitable.

Unlikely match-winners have been the single biggest sign of a champion team in the IPL, including the ones that the now-mentor Gautam Gambhir led in 2012 and 2014. He wouldn't have liked this 12-year streak to end in any other way.