MUMBAI (Reuters) – The expanded Indian Premier League (IPL) got underway with Kolkata Knight Riders beating defending champions Chennai Super Kings by six wickets in the tournament opener on Saturday.
Put in to bat in a rematch of the 2021 final, Chennai suffered early blows and rode Mahendra Singh Dhoni’s unbeaten 50 to a below-par 131-5.
Twice champions Kolkata reached the target with nine balls to spare in their first match under Shreyas Iyer, who replaced Eoin Morgan as the captain.
It also marked IPL’s homecoming after the entire 2020 edition and second half of last year’s league were played in the United Arab Emirates while India grappled with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fans were back in the stadium, albeit at a 25% capacity, but there was no run-feast waiting for them at the Wankhede Stadium.
For Kolkata, Umesh Yadav began with a no ball but soon made amends with double strikes to rattle Chennai’s top order.
Former Chennai captain Dhoni and incumbent Ravindra Jadeja, who made 26 not out, arrested the slide but the four-time champions still fell well short of the 150-mark.
Kolkata, in contrast, got off to a rollicking start with Ajinkya Rahane (44) leading their chase.
Dwayne Bravo claimed three wickets, celebrating the dismissals with a little jig, and Mitchell Santner denied Rahane his fifty but Kolkata’s victory was never in doubt.
After Sam Billings (25) departed, Iyer, who made 20 not out, stayed put to hit the winning runs on his Kolkata debut.
The 15th edition of the world’s richest Twenty20 league is a 10-team affair with Ahmedabad and Lucknow paying a combined $1.7 billion to enter the competition.
The tournament’s most successful team Mumbai Indians, led by India captain Rohit Sharma, will begin their bid for a sixth IPL title against Delhi Capitals on Sunday.
(Reporting by Amlan Chakraborty in New Delhi; editing by Ken Ferris)
