The 3rd T20 match of the IPL 2021 was played between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Kolkata Knight Riders at MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai on 11 April 2021. Warner, Bairstow, Nabi, Rashid were included in SRH as the overseas players, on the other hand, Cummins, Russell, Morgan, Shakib for the Knight Riders. Both the teams have faced each other 19 times in the Indian Premier League, KKR has won 12 times and SRH got the victory in 7 matches. Harbhajan Singh made his debut for Kolkata.
Sunrisers Hyderabad won the toss and decided to have the ball in hand first. Nitish Rana and Shubman Gill came out to the middle and Bhuvneshwar Kumar got the new ball in hand to open the attack. Kolkata started very well with Gill and Rana and struck 50 runs at the end of the first Power Play without any loss. After the Powerplay, David Warner decided to bring Rashid Khan into the attack and he did his job very well and took the first breakthrough for SRH in his last ball. Shubman Gill for 15 was bowled by Rashid Khan in his first over. After the dismissal, Rahul Tripathi came to join Rana, and both the players added 93 runs for the second wicket. Nitish Rana and Rahul Tripathi completed their fifties from 37 and 28 balls. Afterward, Rahul Tripathi was dismissed by T Natarajan in 15.2 overs. After Tripathi's dismissal, SRH did not give chance to other power hitters of KKR like Andre Russell, Eoin Morgan to open their bat and sent them back soon. Finally, KKR successfully reached a total of 187 for 6 at the end of 20 overs. KKR could add some 15-20 more runs to their total but SRH really bowled well in the last 5 overs. SRH got the target of 188 runs to win the 3rd T20 of IPL 2021 from 120 balls. Mohammad Nabi and Rashid Khan took 2 wickets each.
Wriddhiman Saha and David Warner were on the crease to chase the target and Harbhajan Singh got the responsibility of the new ball. SRH did not get a good start as they lost both of their openers at 10 runs. Then Manish Pandey and Jonny Bairstow handled the situation very well and built up a crucial partnership of 92 runs. Both the batsmen had completed their fifty and were looking good with the bat. But in 12.6 overs, Jonny Bairstow for 55 was dismissed by Pat Cummins. After his dismissal, SRH got trapped and did not get out of the pressure. On the other hand, Manish Pandey remained on the crease but he also could not do enough and SRH could make only 177 runs at the end of 20 overs. Prasidh Krishna took 2 wickets and Shakib Al Hasan, Pat Cummins and Andre Russell got 1 wicket each. Kolkata Knight Riders won their first match of IPL 2021 session by 10 runs and got 2 points. Nitish Rana was named Man of the Match.