MI vs KKR Man of the Match today: Who was awarded the Man of the Match in IPL 2021 Match 5?

MI vs KKR Man of the Match: Kolkata Knight Riders ended up on the losing side of a match which they shouldn’t have easily won.

During the fifth match of the ongoing 14th season of the Indian Premier League between Kolkata Knight Riders and Mumbai Indians in Chennai, Mumbai Indians beat Kolkata Knight Riders by 10 runs to register their first victory this season.

In what was an astonishing result, Knight Riders ended up losing side despite being in control of the match for a large part. Needing 153 runs to win at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, KKR faltered to the extent that they lost despite a 72-run opening partnership between Nitish Rana (57) and Shubman Gill (33).

Earlier, it was Kolkata captain Eoin Morgan who had won the toss and invited Mumbai in to bat. On the back of batsman Suryakumar Yadav’s 13th IPL half-century, the defending champions scored 152/10 in 20 overs. With bowling figures of 2-0-15-5, KKR all-rounder Andre Russell picked his career-best bowling figures in the biggest T20 league.

MI vs KKR Man of the Match

Knight Riders’ batting collapse began after Gill tried to hit a shot too many against Mumbai spinner Rahul Chahar. Having hit the ball straight to Indians vice-captain Kieron Pollard, Gill unintentionally laid down a pattern for his teammates as most of them emulated him to gift their wickets away.

With their premier bowlers failing to get a breakthrough, it was Chahar who didn’t just dismiss Gill but subsequently sent back batsmen such as Rahul Tripathi (5), Eoin Morgan (7) and Rana. Having forced the opposition batsmen to play rash shots on a consistent basis, Chahar’s career-best bowling figures of 4-0-27-4 earned him the ‘Man of the Match’ award and rightly so.

“There was pressure when they started well and a spinner had to pull it back. My strength is to turn it at pace. I enjoyed [Rahul] Tripathi’s wicket. I deliberately tried to bowl a flipper to [Nitish] Rana knowing it’s my last ball of the spell. Rohit [Sharma] gives me a lot of confidence and the management too is very supportive,” Chahar told Star Sports during the post-match presentation ceremony.