Kolkata cruises to IPL Final

Mitchell Starc dismantled the batting of Sunrisers Hyderabad for 159 and was the driving force of Kolkata Knight Riders to the Indian Premier League final with a crushing eight-wicket win in the playoff.

Starc ended with 3-34 after Hyderabad won the toss but crumbled against the Australian left-arm fast bowler.

Kolkata, topped the points table with nine wins, cruised to 164-2 in just 13.4 overs with captain Shreyas Iyer on 58 and Venkatesh Iyer on 51 both hitting unbeaten half-centuries.

Starc sliced through the top-order reducing Hyderabad to 39-4 inside the batting power play. Starc had his Australian teammate Travis Head for second successive duck in the tournament when he had him clean bowled off the second delivery.

Andre Russell then held onto a terrific catch of Abhishek Sharma (3) at Vaibhav Arora (1-17) in the second over before Starc beat Nitish Kumar Reddy (9) and then Shahbaz Ahmed played the ball back onto his stumps off the next delivery.

Tripathi raised his half-century off 29 balls and together with Heinrich Klaasen (32) revived the innings with a 62-run stand but Kolkata came back strongly to take Klaasen out off Varun Chakravarthy (2-26) in the 11th over.

Hyderabad was in danger at 9-126 before Pat Cummins (30) made some impressive strikes in the last four overs and to raise the score.

Rahmanullah Gurbaz (23) and Sunil Narine (21) provided Kolkata with a boisterous start off 44 off just 20 balls as Cummins got 20 runs off his first over. Gurbaz hit two fours and two sixes, Narine also struck four boundaries.

Shreyas and Venkatesh then shared a  97-run partnership with Shreyas striking three sixes and a four against Head taking the total to 164-2 with 6.2 overs remaining.