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After Kolkata Knight Riders knocked out Royal Challengers Bangalore from IPL 2021, they were now up against Delhi Capitals in Qualifier 2 on Wednesday which was the fight for a place in the finals. It was Eoin Morgan who won the toss and put DC to bat first on a challenging Sharjah wicket. As expected, it wasn't an easy outing for the batters in the middle as they found it extremely hard to time the ball.
Prithvi Shaw did hit a couple of boundaries and a six but he was outdone by Varun Chakravarthy on the very first delivery of his spell. Marcus Stoinis was sent to bat at No. 3 and he, alongside Shikhar Dhawan, steadied the innings with the score reading 52/1 in 8 overs when the match stopped for the strategic time-out.
However, things slowly started to tilt in favour of KKR in the middle phase as DC lost a flurry of wickets as they found themselves reeling at 92/4 in 16 overs. This is when Eoin Morgan got Varun Chakravarthy back into the attack for his final over and it turned out to be quite an exciting over for the viewers.
Shubman Gill takes brilliant catch at long-on
On the 4th delivery of the over, Shimron Hetmyer mistimed the ball while trying to clear the boundary down the long on region. The left-handed batsman did not really find the middle of the bat as the ball seemed to be landing short of Shubman Gill. However, the KKR fielder was in no mood to let go of the opportunity as he produced a valiant diving effort to grasp the ball, producing the moment of the match.
Watch the video here:
Third umpire signals no-ball
However, in a dramatic sequence of events, the replays showed that Varun Chakravarthy had marginally overstepped and the no-ball siren confirmed that Hetmyer will get another life in Sharjah. Although it looked quite close, the third umpire probably made the right call in the end with the replays showing that there was nothing behind the line.
Watch the video here:
The left-handed batsman certainly capitalized on the opportunity provided to him as he smashed two big sixes off Lockie Ferguson in the next over to add some crucial runs in the final stages for his side before getting run-out.