On 26 May 2024, the most destructive batting side in the history of the Indian Premier League was bowled out for 113. Sunrisers Hyderabad had spent ten weeks rewriting the sport's scoring ceiling — 287 for 3 against Royal Challengers, 277 for 3 against Mumbai Indians, 266 for 7 against Delhi Capitals, an average of 190.8 runs across sixteen innings — and then, on the one night that decided everything, they lasted 18.5 overs at the MA Chidambaram Stadium and never once looked like the team that got them there.
Kolkata Knight Riders chased the target down in 10.5 overs. Fifty-five balls remained unused. It remains the lowest total ever posted in an IPL final and the fastest completed chase in an IPL final, two records set inside the same three hours. This is the story of how a season built entirely on violence ended in the quietest final the tournament has produced.
The night the ceiling collapsed
A toss that looked routine
Pat Cummins won the toss and batted. It was the obvious call and, given the season Hyderabad had assembled, close to unarguable: this was a side whose entire identity was built on posting a number nobody could reach. Their powerplay average in 2024 was 67.1 runs — against a league average of 56.8 — and their best six-over burst of the season had been 125 without loss. Batting first was not a tactic for Sunrisers Hyderabad. It was a business model.
Chepauk, though, was not Hyderabad's Uppal. The surface at the MA Chidambaram Stadium has historically rewarded seam movement early and grip later, and Kolkata had arrived with the two bowlers best equipped to exploit both halves of that equation. What followed was not a collapse in the conventional sense — no single catastrophic over, no run-out cascade. It was a slow, methodical dismantling in which Hyderabad were never permitted to play the only innings they knew how to play.
Starc's first over
Mitchell Starc had endured a difficult league campaign. Bought for ₹24.75 crore in December 2023 — the most expensive purchase in IPL auction history at that point — he conceded 444 runs across 41.8 overs in 2024 at an economy rate of 10.61. For two months he was the emblem of auction-day excess.
He removed Abhishek Sharma with the fourth ball of the final. Bowled, for 2 off 5. Vaibhav Arora then had Travis Head caught behind for 0 off a single delivery in the second over — a batter who had scored 567 runs at a strike rate of 191.6 that season, gone before he had faced a second ball. Hyderabad were 6 for 2 inside eleven deliveries, and the innings that was supposed to break the game had already been decided.
Starc finished with 3-0-14-2 and was named Player of the Match. He had taken 3 for 34 in Qualifier 1 five days earlier against the same opponent, and won the award for that too. Two knockout matches, two awards, one opponent — a bowler purchased for a season, delivering across a week.
The middle order that never arrived
The scorecard from that point reads like a list of interrupted starts. Rahul Tripathi made 9 off 13. Aiden Markram top-scored among the specialists with 20 off 23, a strike rate of 87 in a side that had averaged well above 175 all season. Heinrich Klaasen, whose 479 runs had come at 171.1, made 16 off 17 before being bowled by Harshit Rana. Nitish Kumar Reddy managed 13 off 10.
Hyderabad's highest score came from their captain. Cummins made 24 off 19 batting at number nine, more than any of the six specialist batters above him. By the fourteenth over Hyderabad were 90 for 8. Sunil Narine bowled four overs for 16, Varun Chakaravarthy two for 9, and Andre Russell took 3 for 19 to close the innings. Six bowlers were used; five of them took at least one wicket; none conceded at more than eight an over.
The recovery that never came
The shape of the collapse matters more than its size. Hyderabad were not blown away in a single over — they were denied a partnership for the entire innings. The fall of wickets reads as a sequence of stands that each died before they could become anything.
| Wicket | Score | Batter out | Over | Stand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | Abhishek Sharma | 0.4 | 2 |
| 2 | 6 | Travis Head | 1.5 | 4 |
| 3 | 21 | Rahul Tripathi | 4.1 | 15 |
| 4 | 47 | Nitish Kumar Reddy | 6.6 | 26 |
| 5 | 62 | Aiden Markram | 10.1 | 15 |
| 6 | 71 | Shahbaz Ahmed | 11.4 | 9 |
| 7 | 77 | Abdul Samad | 12.4 | 6 |
| 8 | 90 | Heinrich Klaasen | 14.0 | 13 |
| 9 | 113 | Jaydev Unadkat | 17.4 | 23 |
| 10 | 113 | Pat Cummins | 18.2 | 0 |
No stand in the innings reached 30. The largest was 26, for the fourth wicket. The second-largest, 23, came for the ninth — Cummins and Jaydev Unadkat, two bowlers, outscoring every specialist pairing above them. The last two wickets fell without a run being added.
The powerplay told the same story in miniature. Hyderabad reached the end of the sixth over on 40 for 3, some 27 runs below their own season average for that phase. Between overs seven and fifteen they added 50 runs for the loss of five more wickets — a run rate of 5.56 in the middle overs from a side that had spent the season treating 10 an over as a baseline. Kolkata's second-wicket stand in reply, 91 between Gurbaz and Venkatesh Iyer, was larger than any two Hyderabad partnerships combined.
A chase that lasted 65 balls
Kolkata did not treat 114 as a formality to be navigated. They treated it as a statement to be made. Narine holed out for 6 off 2 in the second over, and what followed was Venkatesh Iyer at his most uncomplicated: 52 not out off 26 balls, four fours, three sixes, a strike rate of 200. Rahmanullah Gurbaz made 39 off 32 at the other end. The pair added 91 for the second wicket.
Kolkata reached 114 for 2 in 10.5 overs, winning by eight wickets. Then-captain Shreyas Iyer was unbeaten on 6 at the close. It was Kolkata Knight Riders' third IPL title, after 2012 and 2014, and it was completed with more than nine overs to spare in a tournament final.
The numbers behind the anomaly
The most useful way to understand this match is to place it against the season that produced it. IPL 2024 was the highest-scoring season in the tournament's history by average innings total, and Hyderabad were its most extreme expression.
| Season | Avg runs per innings | Run rate |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 157.2 | 8.31 |
| 2018 | 165.8 | 8.65 |
| 2022 | 164.8 | 8.54 |
| 2023 | 174.7 | 8.99 |
| 2024 | 182.9 | 9.56 |
| 2025 | 179.2 | 9.64 |
Against that backdrop, Hyderabad's range across 2024 was extraordinary — and the final sits at the very bottom of it.
| SRH innings, IPL 2024 | Score | Opponent |
|---|---|---|
| Highest | 287/3 | Royal Challengers |
| 2nd highest | 277/3 | Mumbai Indians |
| 3rd highest | 266/7 | Delhi Capitals |
| Season average | 190.8 | across 16 innings |
| Final | 113 all out | Kolkata Knight Riders |
That 287 for 3 remains the highest team total in IPL history through the 2025 season. Hyderabad owned three of the four biggest totals of 2024, and then produced the smallest total any side has managed in an IPL final.
| Lowest totals in IPL finals | Score | Season |
|---|---|---|
| Sunrisers Hyderabad | 113 (18.5 ov) | 2024 |
| Chennai Super Kings | 125/9 | 2013 |
| Rising Pune Supergiant | 128/6 | 2017 |
| Mumbai Indians | 129/8 | 2017 |
| Rajasthan Royals | 130/9 | 2022 |
| Royal Challengers Bangalore | 137/9 | 2009 |
The bowling card is the other half of the story. Kolkata's attack did not rely on one spell; it relied on six bowlers all refusing to leak.
| KKR bowling — 2024 final | Figures | Economy |
|---|---|---|
| Mitchell Starc | 3-0-14-2 | 4.67 |
| Sunil Narine | 4-0-16-1 | 4.00 |
| Varun Chakaravarthy | 2-0-9-1 | 4.50 |
| Harshit Rana | 4-0-24-2 | 6.00 |
| Andre Russell | 2.3-0-19-3 | 7.60 |
| Vaibhav Arora | 3-0-24-1 | 8.00 |
One further detail frames the whole campaign: Kolkata beat Hyderabad in all three of their 2024 meetings — by 4 runs in the league match on 23 March, by 8 wickets in Qualifier 1 on 21 May, and by 8 wickets in the final. Kolkata won eleven of their fourteen completed fixtures that season. The final was not an upset. It was a confirmation.
What the 2024 final still teaches
The lesson that survived this match is narrower and more useful than "Hyderabad choked." Ultra-aggressive batting is a distribution, not a guarantee. A side that averages 190 is not a side that scores 190 every night — it is a side whose outcomes are spread very widely, with enormous upside and a long, thin tail of catastrophic failure. Hyderabad's method maximised the mean and, unavoidably, the variance with it. Over fourteen league games, variance is smoothed away and the mean wins you a place in the final. In a single knockout match, variance is the only thing that matters.
The second lesson is about conditions. Hyderabad's model was calibrated for flat surfaces and short boundaries. Chepauk offered neither, and the side had no second gear — no accumulation template, no plan for 140 being a competitive score. When the top three fell for 21 inside five overs, there was no version of the innings left to play.
This is exactly the kind of asymmetry CricMind's Oracle engine is built to surface. A model that reads only season averages would have made Hyderabad clear favourites on 26 May 2024; a model that weights venue behaviour, pitch type and the volatility of a batting line-up alongside its mean output reads the same fixture very differently. Confidence and win probability are separate quantities, and the gap between them is where finals are decided.
The third lesson belongs to squad construction. Kolkata's attack in that final featured pace that moved the ball, two spinners who could grip it, and an all-rounder who closed the innings. That combination — variety over specialisation — is why they could win a final on a surface that suited neither of the season's dominant trends. Teams entering IPL 2026 with a single-dimension attack should read the 2024 final closely.
Three takeaways
- A record-breaking mean is not a floor. Hyderabad averaged 190.8 across sixteen innings in 2024 and made 113 in the one that counted. High-variance batting produces both the ceiling and the collapse; they are the same strategy viewed on different nights.
- Knockout cricket rewards bowling variety over batting maximalism. Kolkata used six bowlers, five took wickets, none went at more than eight an over. No individual spell won the final — the absence of any weak link did.
- Venue behaviour outranks season form in a one-off match. Chepauk on 26 May 2024 was not the surface Hyderabad's method was designed for, and a side with only one way to bat had no fallback when the first plan failed inside five overs.
Frequently asked questions
What was the score in the 2024 IPL final?
Sunrisers Hyderabad were bowled out for 113 in 18.5 overs. Kolkata Knight Riders chased 114 for the loss of 2 wickets in 10.5 overs, winning by 8 wickets on 26 May 2024 at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chepauk, Chennai.
Is 113 the lowest total in an IPL final?
Yes. Hyderabad's 113 all out is the lowest total recorded in any IPL final between 2008 and 2025. The previous lowest was Chennai Super Kings' 125 for 9 in the 2013 final.
Who won Player of the Match in the 2024 IPL final?
Mitchell Starc, for figures of 3-0-14-2. He also won Player of the Match in Qualifier 1 against the same opponent five days earlier, where he took 3 for 34.
How many IPL titles have Kolkata Knight Riders won?
Three — in 2012, 2014 and 2024. The 2024 win was completed with 55 balls to spare, the fastest finish to a run chase in an IPL final.
Why did Sunrisers Hyderabad collapse in the 2024 final?
They lost Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head inside the first two overs to be 6 for 2, on a Chepauk surface offering seam movement rather than the flat conditions their high-tempo method was built for. No specialist batter passed 20; captain Pat Cummins top-scored with 24 from number nine.
What was the highest score of the 2024 IPL season?
Sunrisers Hyderabad's 287 for 3 against Royal Challengers on 15 April 2024 — which remains the highest team total in IPL history through the 2025 season.
Did Kolkata beat Hyderabad every time in 2024?
Yes, in all three meetings: by 4 runs in the league fixture on 23 March, by 8 wickets in Qualifier 1 on 21 May, and by 8 wickets in the final on 26 May.