IPL 2020: Nitish Rana, Ruturaj Gaikwad headline stats after CSK vs KKR match

Chennai Super Kings (CSK) beat the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by 6 wickets in the 49th match of IPL 2020 at Dubai as the former scaled-down the 173-run target on the last ball of the chase.

After winning the toss, MS Dhoni opted to bowl first and KKR got off to a decent start with the bat. Nitish Rana paced his innings beautifully to make a 61-ball 87, following up his golden duck in his previous game. The momentum shifted towards CSK after Rana got out, though, before a cameo from Dinesh Karthik helped KKR set up a competitive total of 172.

Though CSK got off to a slightly slow start with the bat, momentum was on their side as Ambati Rayudu and Ruturaj Gaikwad showed a lot of intent with some really good looking shots.

KKR have taken quite a few gambles in IPL 2020 and they did make a few surprising calls against CSK too. The move to bring in an extra batsman and play with five bowlers, sending out Narine to bat before Eoin Morgan and the move to give an over to Rana where he conceded 16 runs did not help their cause.

Eventually, CSK got across the line through two star performers with the bat. Gaikwad's 72 did lay the platform for a relatively comfortable finish, but with CSK in trouble needing 30 runs off the last two overs, Ravindra Jadeja proved to make all the difference with some late big-hitting.

Click here to see IPL 2020 points table.

---

Interesting stats from the CSK vs KKR IPL 2020 match

Ruturaj Gaikwad scored 72 runs in 53 balls with some sublime shots

• Shubman Gill completed 400 runs in this IPL season, making him the 7th batsman to achieve this feat.

• Nitish Rana leads the list of most 50s by an uncapped Indian player in the IPL with 11 half-centuries to his name (Suryakumar Yadav has 10).

• Nitish Rana has been dismissed eight times by a pace bowler this season. He averages 22.62 against fast bowlers, while averaging 43.25 against spinners.

• Nitish Rana's last 4 innings :- 87(61), 0(1), 81(53) and 0(1).

• This was the first match in which the KKR openers put on a 50+ run partnership this season.

• Sunil Narine played his 350th T20 match and hit the 1000th six in the IPL for KKR.

• After Murali Vijay (2010) and Ben Hilfenhaus (2012), Ruturaj Gaikwad is the third player from CSK to win consecutive Man of the Match awards.

• Ruturaj Gaikwad tops the list of highest runs scored for CSK by an uncapped Indian player with scores of 72 and 65*.

• Varun Chakravarthy castled MS Dhoni for the second time in IPL 2020.

• Prior to this match, in the 10 games played in Dubai, teams batting second lost the game nine times.

• This is the 6th time in IPL history when CSK chased a target on the last ball of the innings.

• Both teams did not lose any wicket in the powerplay overs. This was only the second such instance this season.