Luck was on Kolkata Knight Riders side in the IPL 2021 Final against Chennai Super Kings on Friday (October 15). Chasing a mammoth target of 193 to win against MS Dhoni’s side, KKR got the perfect start through their young opening partnership of Shubman Gill and Venkatesh Iyer.


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CSK believed they had finally got a breakthrough in the 10th over of the match with the score on 79 when Gill skied Ravindra Jadeja and Ambati Rayudu took a brilliant running catch with Punjab batsman on 27. Dhoni & Co began to celebrate immediately but the umpires sent the decision up to the third umpire.


While the general feeling was that they were checking for no-ball by the bowler, replays revealed that the ball had touched the Spidercam wire and had to declared a ‘dead ball’. It was a huge reprieve for KKR, as Gill then immediately smashed Jadeja for two successive boundaries.


Here’s a video of the dead ball incident…



However, there was finally some cheer for Dhoni’s side with Shardul Thakur picking up two wickets in the next over – first breaking the 91-run first-wicket partnership by dismissing Venkatesh Iyer (50 off 32 balls) and then dismissing Nitish Rana for a duck.


CSK skipper Dhoni was the first one to take a huge gasp of relief as he had dropped Iyer for a duck off Deepak Chahar early in KKR reply. Ironically, it was Jadeja, who was denied by the ‘dead ball’ who picked up the brilliant diving catch to dismiss Iyer.


Jadeja then once again picked up an impressive catch on the boundary off Josh Hazlewood to send back Sunil Narine (2) as KKR slipped to 98/3 in the 12th over. Gill at the other end completed his 50 off 40 deliveries with six boundaries.