Insight Bureau: Captain MS Dhoni, the Champion of T20I cricket, had the last laugh, as his team Chennai Super Kings won the IPL 2021 title with a comprehensive 27-run victory over the Kolkata Knight Riders.
It’s the 4th IPL title for Chennai Super Kings (CSK). They earlier won in 2010, 2011 and 2018 – all under Dhoni’s captaincy.
Earlier, CSK had posted 192/3 in 20 overs, thanks to Faf du Plessis (86), Ruturaj Gaikwad (32), Robin Uthappa (31) and Moeen Ali (37*). Sunil Narine took two wickets for KKR.
While chasing a victory target of 193, KKR were 91/0 in 10.3 overs at one stage. But they suffered an unprecedented batting collapse and plunged to 125/8 in 16.3 overs. They could not recover from that and finished at 165/9, losing the match by 27 runs.
For Kolkata Knight Riders, openers Shubman Gill (51) and Venkatesh Iyer (50) were the top scorers. For CSK, Shardul Thakur took 3 wickets, while Hazlewood and Jadeja took 2 wickets each.
Faf du Plessis was declared ‘Player of the Match’ while Harshal Patel won the ‘Player of the Series’ award.
Chennai Super Kings are the second most successful team in IPL with 4 titles – just behind Mumbai Indians (5).
