Allen 93, Raghuvanshi 82 not out: KKR halt GT's surge with a 29-run win at Eden Gardens
Kolkata Knight Riders kept their season breathing at Eden Gardens, posting 247 for 2 and then surviving a Shubman Gill assault to beat Gujarat Titans by 29 runs in match 60 of IPL 2026. Finn Allen set the tone with 93 off 35 balls, Angkrish Raghuvanshi finished on 82 not out, Cameron Green added an unbeaten 52, and Sunil Narine marked his 200th IPL match with two wickets.
It was the win KKR had to have. Defeat would have buried them; instead they leap to seventh on the table and stretch the playoff race into its final week. For an in-form Gujarat side that arrived one victory away from sealing the top-four, the loss snaps a run and pushes qualification into the next round.
Allen lights the fuse, Raghuvanshi finishes the job
Allen's innings was the kind of thing T20 teams chase from openers and rarely get. Thirty-five balls, ten sixes and four fours, a strike rate north of 265 by the time he was dismissed. By then KKR already had the platform the rest of the order could swing on, and the 27 sixes Allen has hit through nine matches are now the most by a KKR player in their first season at the franchise.
Ajinkya Rahane fell early to Mohammed Siraj for 14 off 14, and that brought Raghuvanshi in to play the innings of his short IPL career. His 82 not out came off 44 balls, and the third-wicket stand with Green was the part of the night that quietly built 247. The pair added 108 without separation, with Green hitting 52 off 28 and timing the death overs as well as anyone has at this ground all season.
Gill and Buttler keep the chase alive until the bowlers find a way
GT did not roll over. Sai Sudharsan was hit on the left elbow by a short Kartik Tyagi delivery in the third over and walked off at 23 off 13. Shubman Gill responded by going at his own length, finishing on 85, and Jos Buttler joined him for 57 that briefly had the asking rate looking ordinary.
The wicket that turned the night was Buttler, taken in the middle overs as KKR's spinners squeezed the run rate. Sudharsan returned to bat and made 53 not out off 28, but the chase had already drifted past the over he could rescue. GT closed on 218 for 4, with the partnerships never quite long enough to get the rate down.
Narine's 2 for 29 was the standout return, fittingly on the night he became the first overseas player and the 13th cricketer overall to feature in 200 IPL matches. Varun Chakravarthy was tidy through his quota and the rest of the bowling group kept GT in catch-up mode after Buttler fell, and KKR closed it out with the scoreboard never quite within reach.
What the result does to the table
KKR's playoff math is still long, but it is open. They sit seventh and need a near-perfect finish to their remaining games, and they will likely need other results too. GT stay second on 16 points, level with RCB but split by net run rate, and their qualification is now a question of when rather than if, which is the position they want to be in with one match left.
The bigger takeaway from Eden was that KKR finally produced a top-order night. Allen had been on the edge of a breakout; this was it. If he can do half of that again on May 20 against Mumbai Indians, KKR's run home becomes a story.
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