Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) turned up the heat at Eden Gardens on Thursday, April 3, as they crushed Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) by a massive 80-run margin in Match 15 of IPL 2025. It was an all-round performance from the home team, who looked sharp with both bat and ball even after losing the toss.

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The match started with SRH choosing to bowl first, but KKR didn’t seem bothered. After a slow start KKR’s middle order exploded powering them to a strong total of 200/6. Despite the empty stands at Eden Gardens the Knight Riders let their cricket do the talking.

SRH never really got going in the chase. Their batters looked uncomfortable from the start, and they eventually folded for 120 runs in 16.4 overs suffering their biggest defeat in IPL history. The KKR bowlers led by Vaibhav Arora were on fire and made sure the chase never looked close.

Vaibhav Arora | Player of the Match 

"I keep myself prepared to come in as the impact sub. I assess what the pitch is doing from outside, whether there's swing, whether the ball is holding. Yorkers and cutters are important in the fifth-sixth over as the ball doesn't swing by then. We plan for different batters in our meetings depending on who the batter is, whether he is likely to give the charge."

Ajinkya Rahane | KKR Captain

"This game was really important for us. Winning by a big margin was crucial. Even we wanted to bowl on this wicket. When we lost two early wickets, wanted to consolidate till 6 overs - play with intent but play cricketing shots. And then when we have wickets in hand, guys down the order can get as many runs as possible. Happy with the batting unit. Last two games were not up to the mark for us. But we learned a lot from our mistakes. This is a great example for us as a batting unit. Rinku and Venkatesh - those guys can play brilliant shots. Ramandeep was sitting in the dugout, Dre (Russell) was sitting and Moeen was also ready. It was about playing normal till 15 overs and take it on. Initially we thought 170-180 in the surface would be good. Slower balls were gripping. We had three quality spinners. Moeen, unfortunately, couldn't bowl tonight. Sunny and Varun bowled really well. Credit goes to Vaibhav and Harshit as well."

Pat Cummins | SRH Captain

"Not a great time. I think this was gettable, pretty good wicket. Left too many in the field and then fell well short in the end. We need to be realistic, three games in a row it hasn’t come off for us. We need to maybe look back at whether we could have chosen better options. Our batters are best when they take the game on, but looking back maybe we could have taken different options. (On what went wrong) It was mainly our fielding, overall bowling wasn’t bad. We should have taken a few catches and stopped them a bit earlier. (On Adam Zampa not playing) We only bowled 3 overs of spin, the ball wasn’t gripping for us too. So opted to go without him. (On how he will deal with this loss) I will probably address it on whether we could have used different options, but don’t want to dwell too much on it. We go back to a venue we know so well now."