Twenty-nine runs off the final over. In the full ball-by-ball record of the IPL from 2008 to 2025, 147 chases have arrived at the last over needing between 25 and 39 runs, and exactly one of them has been won. It happened on Sunday, 9 April 2023, at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. A 25-year-old from Aligarh named Rinku Singh watched Umesh Yadav take a single off the first ball of Yash Dayal's over, then hit the next five deliveries into the Ahmedabad night.
Every IPL season has a moment that people remember by name. 2008 has McCullum's 158. 2013 has Gayle's 175. 2019 has Malinga's last-ball yorker. 2023, the season that brought back home-and-away cricket after three years of COVID-era bubbles, has Rinku's five sixes. This is a ball-by-ball reconstruction of Match 13 of IPL 2023, Gujarat Titans against Kolkata Knight Riders. It is the story of how a chase that every probability model had written off was won anyway, and why that evening in April 2023 still shapes how T20 finishing is valued three years later.
The Match That Should Have Been Over Twice
Gujarat's 204: Vijay Shankar's late assault
On 9 April 2023 the defending champions won the toss and batted. Rashid Khan was leading Gujarat that afternoon because Hardik Pandya was unwell. The first 17 overs were solid rather than spectacular. Shubman Gill made 39 off 31 balls, Wriddhiman Saha 17 off 17, and Sai Sudharsan anchored with 53 off 38. Sunil Narine was the pick of the Kolkata attack, taking 3/33 including Gill and Sudharsan.
Then Vijay Shankar took over. The 19th over, bowled by Lockie Ferguson, went for 25 runs, including a no-ball that went for five and two sixes. The 20th, from Shardul Thakur, went for 20, with three consecutive sixes off the third, fourth and fifth balls. Shankar finished on 63* off 24 balls with five sixes. Gujarat added 45 in the last two overs to reach 204/4, and at the halfway mark in Ahmedabad in April 2023 that looked like a winning total.
Kolkata's chase: the Venkatesh Iyer–Nitish Rana platform
Kolkata's reply began badly. Rahmanullah Gurbaz (15 off 12) fell to Mohammed Shami in the third over, and N Jagadeesan (6 off 8) went to Joshua Little in the fourth. At 28/2, a target of 205 looked a long way off.
Venkatesh Iyer and Nitish Rana then added exactly 100 for the third wicket. Rana's 45 off 29 included three sixes, and Iyer played the innings of his IPL career to that point: 83 off 40 balls with eight fours and five sixes. The 12th over went for 17 and the 15th for another 17. When Alzarri Joseph removed Rana with the first ball of the 14th over, Kolkata were 128/3 and scoring at close to the required rate.
Joseph struck again in the 16th over, when Iyer holed out to Gill. After 16 overs Kolkata were 155/4, needing 50 off 24 balls with Andre Russell walking in. It was difficult but realistic, and exactly the sort of equation Russell had made his name on since his 2019 season.
The Rashid Khan hat-trick
Rashid Khan, captaining the side for the day, bowled the 17th over himself, and the chase collapsed in three balls.
- 16.1 — Russell edged behind to KS Bharat for 1.
- 16.2 — Narine was caught for a first-ball duck.
- 16.3 — Shardul Thakur was trapped lbw first ball.
It was the first hat-trick of IPL 2023. Kolkata went from 155/4 to 155/7 in the space of three deliveries, and Rashid finished with 3/37. The over cost only two runs, and Shami's 18th over only five. After 18 overs Kolkata were 162/7, needing 43 off 12 balls with a No. 6 batter on 7 and Umesh Yadav at the other end. The match was over by any reasonable standard.
The 19th over: the flicker nobody noticed
Joshua Little's 19th over is the forgotten part of this story. It began with two wides and then two dot balls to Rinku. Off the last two legal deliveries, Rinku hit a six and a four. The over cost 14, leaving Kolkata at 176/7 and needing 29 off the final six balls.
Rinku was on 18 off 16 balls at that point. That was not a failed innings, but it was not a finisher's innings either.
The Final Over, Ball by Ball
Rashid gave the last over to left-armer Yash Dayal. Dayal had conceded 38 off his first three overs, but he had the arithmetic firmly on his side.
| Ball | Batter | Outcome | Runs needed after ball | Balls left |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19.1 | Umesh Yadav | Single | 28 | 5 |
| 19.2 | Rinku Singh | SIX | 22 | 4 |
| 19.3 | Rinku Singh | SIX | 16 | 3 |
| 19.4 | Rinku Singh | SIX | 10 | 2 |
| 19.5 | Rinku Singh | SIX | 4 | 1 |
| 19.6 | Rinku Singh | SIX | Won | 0 |
Kolkata finished on 207/7 and won by three wickets. Rinku finished on *48 off 21 balls with six sixes and one four**. He scored 30 off his final five balls after making 18 off his first 16. Dayal finished with 0/69 from four overs, one of the most expensive spells in IPL history at the time.
Umesh's single is the part that gets overlooked. With 29 needed, taking the single to give the strike to the set batter was a professional decision by a tail-ender. After that, five sixes was the only possible way to win. A single four, two, or dot ball in the last five deliveries would have ended the chase. Rinku's sequence therefore had to be perfect, and it was.
Data Deep-Dive: How Rare Was This?
The largest final-over targets ever chased in the IPL
Drawing on ball-by-ball Cricsheet data for every IPL season from 2008 to 2025, these are the biggest final-over requirements that were successfully chased:
| Rank | Season | Chasing team | Opponent | Venue | Needed off final over | Scored |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2023 | Kolkata Knight Riders | Gujarat Titans | Ahmedabad | 29 | 31 |
| 2 | 2016 | Rising Pune Supergiants | Kings XI Punjab | Visakhapatnam | 23 | 23 |
| 3 | 2022 | Gujarat Titans | Sunrisers Hyderabad | Mumbai | 22 | 25 |
| 4 | 2009 | Deccan Chargers | Kolkata Knight Riders | Johannesburg | 21 | 26 |
| 5 | 2011 | Mumbai Indians | Kolkata Knight Riders | Kolkata | 21 | 23 |
| 6 | 2012 | Royal Challengers Bangalore | Pune Warriors | Bengaluru | 21 | 24 |
The gap between first and second place is six runs, which is a full boundary and a couple more. Before 9 April 2023, the record was MS Dhoni's 23 off Axar Patel at Visakhapatnam in May 2016. Rinku didn't just beat that record. He moved the limit of what a final-over chase could be.
The table also shows the 31 runs Kolkata scored in that over. That is the most runs scored in the final over of any IPL run chase in the dataset. The closest challenge came in April 2024, when Punjab Kings needed 29 off the last over against Sunrisers at Mohali. They scored 26 and lost by two runs, which shows how narrow Rinku's margin really was.
The two innings side by side
| Metric | Gujarat Titans | Kolkata Knight Riders |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 204/4 (20) | 207/7 (20) |
| Top scorer | Vijay Shankar 63* (24) | Venkatesh Iyer 83 (40) |
| Sixes | 7 | 15 |
| Last two overs | 45 runs | 45 runs |
| Best bowling | Sunil Narine 3/33 | Rashid Khan 3/37 (hat-trick) |
| Most expensive | Lockie Ferguson 0/40 | Yash Dayal 0/69 |
The symmetry is striking. Both sides scored exactly 45 in their final two overs. Gujarat did it with six wickets in hand and Kolkata with three. The difference between the teams came down to where those 45 runs were scored. Gujarat spread theirs across 12 balls, while Kolkata scored 30 of theirs from Rinku's last five deliveries.
Rinku Singh's IPL arc, season by season
| Season | Runs | Balls | Strike rate | Sixes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 29 | 31 | 93.5 | 0 |
| 2019 | 37 | 34 | 108.8 | 2 |
| 2020 | 11 | 11 | 100.0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 174 | 117 | 148.7 | 7 |
| 2023 | 474 | 317 | 149.5 | 29 |
| 2024 | 168 | 113 | 148.7 | 8 |
| 2025 | 206 | 134 | 153.7 | 10 |
In his first three seasons, from 2018 to 2020, Rinku scored 77 runs in total. In 2023 he scored 474 and hit 29 sixes, more than four times as many as in any other season. The five sixes in Ahmedabad were not a random spike in form. They were the moment his 2023 season, and his career, came into focus.
Legacy Impact — What This Means Today
The five sixes changed two things in the IPL, and both are still visible in the 2026 season.
First, they changed how finishers are priced. Before April 2023, "finisher" in the IPL usually meant an overseas power-hitter like Russell, Pollard or Miller. Rinku showed that an uncapped Indian left-hander batting at No. 6 could carry that role. His India T20I debut came in August 2023, four months after Ahmedabad. When Rinku Singh was retained by Kolkata ahead of the 2025 mega auction, the franchise was paying for exactly that capability. He remains a Knight Rider in 2026, still batting in the same late-order slot.
Second, they rewrote how improbable a finish can be. A total of 29 runs off one over used to count as mathematically possible but practically out of reach. Since 9 April 2023, fans and commentators in the IPL have treated "one more big over" as a live possibility until the final ball. The impact-player rule, also introduced in 2023, added batting depth to every side, and the sheer weight of runs in 2024 and 2025 has reinforced the same idea.
The cast of that night has since scattered in ways that show how much the league has changed in three years. Venkatesh Iyer, whose 83 made the chase possible, and Yash Dayal, who bowled the over that ended it, are now teammates at Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Dayal rebuilt his career and was a key member of RCB's attack in their title-winning 2025 season, which is one of the best redemption stories the IPL has produced. Nitish Rana is at Delhi Capitals and Shardul Thakur at Mumbai Indians. Rashid Khan is still Gujarat's leg-spin weapon, and Gill now leads that side as captain.
This is exactly the kind of moment CricMind's Oracle is built to measure honestly. The Oracle's Micro engine updates win probability every ball. When it assesses a state like 176/7 needing 29 off six, it draws on the same history in the first table above, where one chase in 147 got home. A calibrated model gives Kolkata well under 1% at that point, and it should. The point of a probability engine is not to rule out the Rinku Singhs of the world. It is to tell you, accurately, how extraordinary they are when they happen. On a night like 9 April 2023, the honest number is what makes the finish legendary.
Three Takeaways
- 29 off the final over is still the IPL record. No other successful chase in IPL history, from 2008 to 2025, has needed more than 23 in the last over. The record has survived the record-breaking scoring seasons of 2024 and 2025.
- Rashid Khan's hat-trick is the forgotten half of the story. Taking Russell, Narine and Shardul in three balls should have been the match-winning spell of IPL 2023. Instead it became the setup for the greatest finish of the season.
- The single mattered as much as the sixes. Umesh Yadav's first-ball single put the set batter on strike with five deliveries left. Without that professional decision there would be no record.
FAQ
How many runs did KKR need in the last over against GT in 2023?
Kolkata Knight Riders needed 29 runs off the final over, bowled by Yash Dayal, on 9 April 2023 at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad. They scored 31 to win by three wickets.
Did Rinku Singh hit five or six sixes in that over?
Rinku Singh hit five sixes in the final over, off the last five balls. Umesh Yadav took a single off the first ball. Rinku hit six sixes in his whole innings of 48* off 21 balls, including one off Joshua Little in the 19th over.
Who took the hat-trick in the KKR vs GT match in 2023?
Rashid Khan, captaining Gujarat Titans that day in place of the unwell Hardik Pandya, took a hat-trick in the 17th over. He dismissed Andre Russell, Sunil Narine and Shardul Thakur off consecutive balls to reduce KKR from 155/4 to 155/7.
Is 29 off the last over the highest successful chase in IPL history?
Yes. Based on complete ball-by-ball data from 2008 to 2025, 29 is the largest final-over requirement ever successfully chased in the IPL. The previous record was 23, set by Rising Pune Supergiants against Kings XI Punjab at Visakhapatnam in 2016.
What was Rinku Singh's score in the KKR vs GT match?
Rinku Singh scored 48 not out off 21 balls, with six sixes and one four. He was named Player of the Match. Before the final over he was on 18 off 16 balls.
Who were the other key performers in that match?
For Kolkata, Venkatesh Iyer made 83 off 40 balls and Nitish Rana 45 off 29, and Sunil Narine took 3/33. For Gujarat, Vijay Shankar hit 63* off 24 balls, Sai Sudharsan made 53 off 38 and Rashid Khan took 3/37, including his hat-trick.
How did Rinku Singh's career change after the five sixes?
Rinku finished IPL 2023 with 474 runs at a strike rate of 149.5 and 29 sixes, by far his best season. He made his India T20I debut in August 2023 and was retained by KKR ahead of the 2025 mega auction. He remains with Kolkata for IPL 2026.