Ishan Kishan added a crucial 29-ball 40, rotating strike intelligently and finding gaps along the way too. The Klaasen-Kishan pair brought up a fifty partnership for the third wicket in just 20 balls, maintaining the momentum as the innings surged towards what looked like a record-breaking total. Klaasen’s century arrived off the final ball of the 19th over, and SRH ended on a mammoth 278 for 3 – the third highest total in IPL history.  Aniket Verma’s late flourish, with 12 in six balls, helped too.

Before Klaasen’s fireworks, Travis  Head had laid the foundation with a commanding 76 off 40 balls. Head started superbly against Vaibhav Arora, someone he has struggled previously against, and raced to his fifty in 26 balls. That drove SRH to 79 without loss in the powerplay. Abhishek Sharma’s quick 32 from 16 balls ensured SRH capitalised fully on KKR’s early struggles. By the eighth over, SRH were already 109 for 1.

The KKR bowlers never found a consistent length. Anrich Nortje and Arora leaked runs early, while even Narine and Varun Chakravarthy couldn’t stop the flow in the middle overs. Narine’s 13th over provided a rare moment of calm – dismissing Head and conceding just a single, the only over without a boundary since the opening one. But that was short-lived, as Klaasen launched Narine for back-to-back sixes in his final over to bring up SRH’s 200 in the 15th.

Nortje ended up conceding 60 in his four overs, while Varun Chakravarthy went for 54 in three as SRH posted 278 for 3, the third-highest IPL total of all time.

Narine gave KKR’s chase a spectacular start, hammering three sixes and a four off Pat Cummins’ first two overs. But Unadkat turned the tide, deceiving Narine with a slower ball to rattle his leg stump. The wicket also meant KKR became only the third team – after Royal Challengers Bangalore in 2008 and Deccan Chargers in 2010 – to finish a season with no fifty-run opening stands.

Ajinkya Rahane’s brief 15 off eight balls showed promise, but he too fell to Unadkat, while Quinton de Kock’s struggles persisted. De Kock’s 13-ball nine ending tamely against a full toss from Malinga.

Dubey then took centre stage, removing Rinku Singh and Andre Russell in consecutive deliveries in the eighth over. Russell didn’t even wait for the umpire’s decision after being trapped lbw first ball, leaving KKR in tatters at 70 for 5.

With Angkrish Raghuvanshi’s laboured 18 and Ramandeep Singh also falling in the middle overs, the game looked beyond salvage for KKR. But Rana and Pandey provided a late spark. Rana smashed three sixes in his first seven balls, while Pandey rediscovered some fluency with a few crisp shots. They took 21 runs off the 16th over, briefly denting Malinga’s tidy figures.

However, the late surge only delayed the inevitable. Pandey was out for 37 to an Unadkat slower-ball in the 18th over, and next ball Arora was run-out by Unadkat owing to his lazy running. Rana was the last to fall for 34 off 21 balls, with Malinga completing a caught-and-bowled effort to wrap up the innings at 168.

Brief scores:
Sunrisers Hyderabad 278 for 3 in 20 overs (Abhishek Sharma 32, Heinrich Klaasen 105*, Travis Head 76, Ishan Kishan 29, Aniket Verma 12*; Vaibhav Arora1-39,  Sunil Narine 2-42) beat Kolkata Knight Riders 168 in 18.4 overs  (Sunil Narine 31, Manish Pandey 37, Harshit Rana 34, Ajinkya Rahane 15, Angkrish Raghuvanshi 14, Ramandeep Singh 13; Jaydev Unadkat 3-24, Eshan Malinga 3-31, Harsh Dubey 3-34)by 110 runs

[Cricinfo]