Defending Champions starts the season with a win against Mumbai Indians - The Indian Premiere League fever came back with a bang. The 8th season of the tournament started off with the defending champion Kolkata Knight Riders took on the challenge from Mumbai Indians in their home ground Eden Gardens. 1st match of the tournament was most sorts after and Kolkata Knight Riders after winning the toss decided to field first.
Mumbai had the firepower as Aaron Finch and Rohit Sharma started the innings for the team. Both the players are known to be hard hitters but Finch failed to get a start in the match. After scoring 5 runs he fell by miss timing the pull shot off Morne Morkel’s ball. KKR struck once again in the 5th over taking the wicket of Aditya Tare. The next over once again brought success for the team as Morkel struck again taking the wicket of Ambati Raydu. Mumbai were struggling just before the 1st time-out of the game. Later it was an all Mumbai show as Rohit Sharma and Corey Anderson started toying with the bowlers. Rohit took charge to the batting scoring at a brisk rate while Anderson played a supporting role. Rohit scored 98 runs in 65 balls hitting 12 fours and 4 sixes while Anderson scored 55 off 41 balls. Morkel took 2 wickets giving away 18 runs in his 4 overs. Mumbai finished their innings at 168 runs.
Kolkata Knight Riders needed 169 runs in the slow Eden wicket. It was a competitive score which was achievable. Robin Uthappa failed to leave an impression in the match as he lost his wicket after scoring 9 runs in 12 balls. Gautam Gambhir the captain led the chase from the front along with Manish Pandey. They together took the teams score to 98 runs. Right after the 1st strategic time-out Gambhir started to score runs at more ease and the required run rate came down drastically. Manish after scoring 40 runs lost his wicket. Suryakumar Yadav came to bat for KKR and hit the ball well from the word go. Gambhir score 57 runs before losing his wicket to Jasprit Bumrah. At the end it was Yusuf Pathan and Yadav who took KKR home. Yadav scored 46 runs off 20 balls, with this KKR started their campaign with a win in IPL 8.
Suryakumar Yadav won the Yes Bank maximum sixes award for hitting the most sixes and also the HotStar of the match award as the most entertaining player for the match. Morne Morkel was named as the man of the match for his good bowling performance in a batting wicket.