IPL's First Super Over: KKR vs RR and Yusuf Pathan's Four Balls

Sixteen From Six. Rajasthan Used Four.

On April 23, 2009, at Newlands in Cape Town, Rajasthan Royals needed 16 runs from the six balls of the first Super Over ever bowled in the Indian Premier League. Yusuf Pathan hit the first delivery for six, the second for two, the third for six and the fourth for four. Eighteen runs, four balls, and a tiebreaker the tournament had never before needed was finished almost before the field had been set for it.

That match — the tenth fixture of the 2009 season, played some 8,000 kilometres from home because India's general election had forced the entire tournament to relocate to South Africa — is the origin point for every Super Over the IPL has staged since. It is also, on the evidence of the ball-by-ball record, one of the strangest matches the competition has produced: two innings that finished on exactly 150, two bowlers who produced the most miserly spells of the night and were then handed the tiebreaker, and a last ball of regulation play on which a No. 11 scrambled a single to tie the game and was run out attempting the run that would have won it.

The Match: 150 Plays 150 at Newlands

Kolkata Knight Riders won the toss on April 23, 2009 and chose to field. It was a defensible call. Newlands in April was offering slow, gripping cricket rather than the flat highways of the Indian circuit, and the numbers from that season bear it out — 150 was a competitive total at this ground, not a poor one, as the Newlands pitch report from that 2009 tournament sets out in detail.

Rajasthan Stumble, Yusuf Detonates, Rajasthan Stumble Again

Rajasthan were 54 for 2 after the six-over powerplay on April 23 — respectable — and then lost their way entirely. Graeme Smith laboured to 15 off 21. Paul Valthaty made 5. By the halfway mark of the innings they had slid to 78 for 4, and the only violence had come from Yusuf Pathan, who made 42 from 21 balls with six fours and two sixes before Ajantha Mendis had him caught in the ninth over.

What followed was the least watchable passage of the night. Between overs 10 and 15 on that Cape Town evening, Rajasthan added 29 runs. Ravindra Jadeja's 22 came from 26 balls. Dimitri Mascarenhas made 27 from 28. At the end of 19 overs the Royals had 132 for 6 and looked to have wasted the 2008 champions' batting depth entirely.

Then A.S. Raut hit Anureet Singh for 4, 0, 0, 6, 6, 2. Eighteen runs from the final over of the innings, every one of them struck by a batsman who finished unbeaten on 21 from 13 balls. Without that over, Rajasthan finish on 132 and this article does not exist.

Kolkata's Chase Collapses Into the Final Ball

Kolkata's reply was slower still: 38 for 1 in the powerplay, 67 for 3 at ten overs, 98 for 5 at fifteen. Chris Gayle made 41 from 33 with four sixes before Shane Warne — captaining Rajasthan and bowling his full quota — had him caught in the ninth over. Brendon McCullum, a year after his 158 not out had opened the tournament, made 3 from 9.

Sourav Ganguly, batting at five, played the innings that nearly won it: 46 from 30 balls with four fours and two sixes. When the 20th over began on April 23, Kolkata were 144 for 6 and needed 7 from six deliveries with Ganguly on strike.

The Last Over That Made IPL History

Warne threw the ball to Kamran Khan, a 19-year-old left-arm quick playing his first IPL season, who had already bowled three overs for 14 runs and two wickets. The over ran as follows:

• 19.1 — wide. 145 for 6, six needed from six.
• 19.2 — Ganguly takes a single. 146 for 6, five needed from five.
• 19.3 — Ajit Agarkar takes a single. 147 for 6, four needed from four.
• 19.4 — dot to Ganguly. Four needed from three.
• 19.5 — two leg byes. 149 for 6, two needed from two.
• 19.6 — Ganguly caught by Mahesh Rawat. 149 for 7. Two needed from one.
• 19.7 — Ishant Sharma pushes into the off side, takes one to tie the scores at 150, and is run out by Kamran Khan going back for the second.

The over cost six runs. Kamran took Ganguly's wicket and completed the run out that levelled the scores, finishing with 4-0-18-3 — the best bowling figures of the match. The scores were level. For the first time, the IPL had to find a winner somewhere other than in the twenty overs.

The Super Over: Two Heroes, Two Punishments

Under the rules then in force, the side that batted second in the match batted first in the Super Over. Kolkata sent out Gayle and McCullum; Warne, without hesitation, gave the ball back to the teenager who had just bowled the 20th over.

Kamran conceded a single, a second single and a wide, then Gayle hit three consecutive fours. Off the final ball Gayle was caught by Rob Quiney. Kolkata: 15 for 1, Gayle 13 from five balls.

Sixteen to win. Kolkata's choice of bowler was Ajantha Mendis, whose four overs had cost 19 runs at an economy of 4.75 — comfortably the most miserly spell of the match. Rajasthan sent Yusuf Pathan, the man already named Player of the Match. Six. Two. Six. Four. Eighteen from four balls, and the first Super Over in IPL history was decided with two deliveries unused.

The Numbers Behind April 23, 2009

Cricsheet's ball-by-ball record of the match — 267 deliveries across four innings — allows a full reconstruction. The batting was, by modern standards, almost unrecognisably restrained.

Innings Scorecards

The Bowling That Nearly Won It Twice

Phase by Phase — A Match Decided in the Last Over of Each Innings

Read that table from the bottom up and the match reverses itself. After 19 overs Kolkata were 12 runs ahead of Rajasthan's position with four wickets more in hand — a chase they should have completed comfortably. One over of Anureet Singh and one over of Kamran Khan produced a swing of 24 runs and turned a routine Kolkata win into the first tie in IPL history.

Every Super Over the IPL Has Played, 2009–2025

Fifteen Super Overs across the 1,169 matches played between 2008 and 2025, and only one of them — the double Super Over of October 2020 — needed a second attempt. Across those fifteen, only one team scored more than Rajasthan's 18: Sunrisers Hyderabad's 20 without loss against Royal Challengers at Hyderabad on April 7, 2013. Nobody has needed fewer balls than Yusuf Pathan's four.

What April 23, 2009 Still Means

The Super Over has never been a common event. At roughly one in every 78 matches, a season can pass without one — 2011, 2012, 2016, 2018, 2022, 2023 and 2024 all did. That rarity is precisely why the format's founding instance matters: every tiebreaker since has been played under the template set at Newlands, where the chasing side bats first, the captain picks one bowler and one pair of batsmen, and a tournament's worth of planning is compressed into twelve deliveries.

It also established the tactical lesson that the IPL has re-learned repeatedly since. Warne's selection of Kamran Khan was defensible on every number available on April 23, 2009 — best economy in the match, best figures, two wickets in the final over — and it cost Rajasthan 15 runs. Kolkata's selection of Ajantha Mendis was defensible on identical logic and cost them the match. Economy across four overs measures a bowler's ability to build pressure across a spell. A Super Over has no spell. It has six balls against a batsman with no reason to preserve a wicket, and the skill it rewards — surviving pure assault — is not the skill that produces a 4.50 economy rate.

This is the sort of context CricMind's Oracle is built to encode. The engine's win-probability model weights recent form, venue behaviour and matchup history rather than reputation, and it treats the final over of an innings as a distinct phase with its own distribution — which is why a side 132 for 6 after 19 overs is not simply written off, and why our match predictions carry an explicit confidence figure alongside the headline number rather than a single percentage pretending to certainty.

Rajasthan did not build on the night. Defending the title they had won in 2008 under Warne's captaincy, they won five of thirteen matches in 2009 and missed the semi-finals. Kolkata were worse — three wins from thirteen, last place, a season remembered chiefly for the rotating-captaincy experiment that consumed the franchise. Kamran Khan played nine IPL matches as a bowler in his career, taking 10 wickets at an economy of 8.64 before questions over his bowling action interrupted his career. Ajantha Mendis bowled 40.4 overs across ten IPL matches for 8 wickets. Two careers that barely registered, joined forever by twelve deliveries in Cape Town.

The tiebreaker itself endures. On April 26, 2026, Lucknow Super Giants and Kolkata Knight Riders finished level on 155 in the 38th match of the IPL 2026 season and went to the sixteenth Super Over in the competition's history, Kolkata taking it. Seventeen years after Newlands, the mechanism Yusuf Pathan dismantled in four balls was still the last word.

Three Takeaways

• Super Overs punish the wrong bowling virtue. The two most economical bowlers on April 23, 2009 — Kamran Khan at 4.50 and Ajantha Mendis at 4.75 — conceded 15 and 18 in their Super Overs. Restriction across four overs and survival across six balls are different skills, and captains have been conflating them since the format's first night.
• The 20th over is its own match. Rajasthan took 18 from the final over of their innings and Kolkata managed 6 for the loss of two from theirs — a 24-run swing that converted a comfortable chase into a tie. No phase of a T20 innings has a wider outcome distribution.
• Rarity is the point. Fifteen Super Overs in 1,169 matches between 2008 and 2025 means most seasons produce none at all. The 2009 fixture matters less for what it decided — a league game between two sides who would finish sixth and eighth — than for establishing the template every subsequent tiebreaker has followed.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was the first Super Over in IPL history?

April 23, 2009, at Newlands in Cape Town, in the tenth match of the 2009 season. Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders both finished on 150, and Rajasthan won the Super Over by scoring 18 for no loss in reply to Kolkata's 15 for 1.

Why was the 2009 IPL played in South Africa?

The 2009 season coincided with India's general election, and the security resources required to police both events simultaneously were not available. The tournament was relocated to South Africa at short notice, with matches staged at grounds including Newlands, the Wanderers and Kingsmead.

Who won the first IPL Super Over and how?

Rajasthan Royals. Chasing 16, Yusuf Pathan faced Ajantha Mendis and hit 6, 2, 6, 4 from the first four balls — 18 runs with two deliveries to spare. Pathan was named Player of the Match for his 42 from 21 balls in the main innings as well.

Who bowled the Super Over for Rajasthan Royals in 2009?

Kamran Khan, a 19-year-old left-arm quick in his first IPL season. Shane Warne selected him on the strength of match figures of 4-0-18-3 — the best of the night — and he conceded 15, including three consecutive fours to Chris Gayle, before dismissing Gayle from the final delivery.

How did the match end in a tie?

Kolkata needed 7 runs from the last over and Kamran Khan conceded 6 while taking two wickets. Off the final delivery, with two required to win, Ishant Sharma took a single to level the scores at 150 and was run out attempting the second.

How many Super Overs have there been in IPL history?

Fifteen across the 1,169 matches played between 2008 and 2025, with a sixteenth in the 2026 season when Lucknow Super Giants and Kolkata Knight Riders tied on 155 on April 26, 2026. Only one — Mumbai Indians against Kings XI Punjab on October 18, 2020 — has ever required a second Super Over.

What is the highest Super Over score in IPL history?

Of the fifteen Super Overs played between 2009 and 2025, the highest total is Sunrisers Hyderabad's 20 without loss against Royal Challengers Bangalore at Hyderabad on April 7, 2013. Rajasthan's 18 from four balls in 2009 is the next highest and remains the fewest balls taken to win one. The full list is set out in our Super Over record page.