Kolkata Knight Riders hosted Punjab Kings in match 44 of the Indian Premier League 2025 season on Saturday at the Eden Gardens.
Former KKR captain won the toss for PBKS and opted to bat first on a flat track in Kolkata. Riding on Prabhsimran Singh and Priyansh Arya's 120-run partnership, the visitors managed to post a massive total of 201 runs for the loss of four wickets in their stipulated 20 overs.
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Rahmanullah Gurbaz and Sunil Narine came out to open the innings for the hosts and had just faced one over when torrential downpour affected the match.
What will be KKR's revised target against PBKS?
Per IPL rules, reduction of overs will start after the cut-off time, which is set at 10:50 pm. If KKR gets to play a minimum of five overs, their target will come down to 61 runs.
As KKR's current score stands at 7/0 in the first over, they will need 54 runs of the remaining four overs to earn two crucial points from the clash.
MORE: KKR vs PBKS: LIVE score & updates as rain stops play
What are the minimum overs needed for a result in an IPL match?
In a rain-affected match, the team batting second must face a minimum of five overs for a result to be possible.
During the group stage, this allocation must be reached in an additional 60 minutes after the scheduled end of the match.
Once the tournament reaches the playoffs, there are 120 minutes of extra time allowed to complete a rain-affected match.
When the innings of the team batting second is reduced to the extent that it cannot last for the same number of overs as the team that batted first, DLS comes into play.
What is DLS in cricket?
Cricket went through variations of unsatisfactory and sometimes controversial rain rules — namely the Average Run Rate method and Most Productive Over method — before the ICC adopted the Duckworth-Lewis method in 1999. It was formulated by English statisticians Frank Duckworth and Tony Lewis.
After their retirements, professor Steven Stern became the custodian of the method and it was renamed in 2014. DLS weighs the resources available to each side when calculating a revised target for the team batting second. Namely, these resources are overs remaining and wickets in hand.
Instead of simply adjusting the target proportionately to overs lost, DLS considers how many wickets a team has in hand and the overs remaining. For example, a team that is 72/0 after eight overs is likely to score more runs than a team that is 80/4 at the same stage because having wickets in hand should allow more aggressive batting later in the innings.
The DLS par score is adjusted as a reduced innings progress, with runs scored and wickets lost determining where a team is in relation to the par score. In the event of an IPL game finishing after five overs of the second innings but before the full allocation of overs is completed, whether or not the team batting second are ahead or behind the DLS par will determine the result.