Kolkata Knight Riders’ late momentum at the business end of the tournament has finally granted them a playoff spot after Sunrisers Hyderabad and Chennai Super Kings. They have defeated the table-toppers (SRH) in a do-or-die clash on Saturday.

Now, only one playoff berth is available and Kings XI Punjab and Mumbai Indians will be firing on all cylinders in a bid to clinch that last spot in their respective last games on Sunday. Both the teams are two points short of the fourth-placed Rajasthan Royals, who have registered seven victories in 13 matches.

KKR picked up their eighth win at Hyderabad by handing the hosts their second home-defeat in the season. The men led by Kane Williamson had defeated KKR at the Eden Gardens back in mid-April and KKR completed their revenge by putting an unpleasant end to SRH’s admirable run.

Batting first, SRH were once again haunted by their middle-order’s failure as the team posted only 31 runs while giving away seven of their wickets in the last five overs.

Shreevats Goswami got to bat for the first time in his four appearances in this season so far. He opened the innings in place of Alex Hales and stitched a good 79-run opening partnership with Shikhar Dhawan. He was dismissed by Kuldeep Yadav after scoring 35 runs.

Goswami’s departure was followed by another 36-run innings by Kane Williamson who got out by Javon Searles. SRH were still eyeing a mammoth total with Dhawan still on the crease, but the left-hander couldn’t add any runs to the total after clubbing a crucial fifty and with his dismissal, Prasidh Krishna initiated a collapse in SRH’s middle-order.

Manish Pandey tried to stand firm against KKR’s bowling attack and made 25 runs but couldn’t prevent the frequent loss of wickets. Prasidh bagged a total of 4 wickets, including that of Manish, with Sunil Narine and Andre Russell also joining the hunt by taking a wicket each.

With a score of 172/9, SRH still had enough runs on the scoreboard as this was the second highest total in the 1^st innings on this surface in IPL 2018, after CSK’s 182/3. Yet SRH failed to defend it against a win-hungry KKR side, who were off to a flying start by Sunil Narine and Chris Lynn.

Narine’s quick-fire innings of 29 runs was brought to an end by Shakib Al Hasan, but the KKR batsmen kept stringing partnerships and got home by 5 wickets with 2 balls to spare.

A half-century by Lynn was followed by two sensible knocks from Robin Uthappa and Dinesh Karthik, who scored 45 and 26 runs, respectively. Although Carlos Brathwaite and Siddarth Kaul were able to take two scalps each, that couldn’t prevent the KKR captain from taking the team past the finishing line.

This defeat hasn’t changed SRH’s position in the league and CSK might remove them from the top spot should they win against KXIP, the Hyderabad-based franchise will still have two hits to reach the final due to a finish in the top two.