By Prakash Nair 
Kolkata, April 9: Nobody had Mukul Choudhary in their IPL 2026 script. Nobody.
When Lucknow Super Giants were wobbling at 128 for 7, chasing 182 at Eden Gardens, the match was done. Or at least it should have been. Three wickets left. Fifty-four runs needed. A depleted lower order against a crowd that had finally found its voice after weeks of suffering through a winless home season. This was KKR’s moment. Three-time champions, finally getting over the line on their own ground.
Mukul Choudhary had other ideas.
What followed was one of those lower-order knocks that remind you why T20 cricket keeps pulling you back in, even when you know better. Composed, sharp, and almost recklessly brave, it sealed a 3-wicket win for LSG that KKR will be replaying in their heads for days.
The Night KKR Did Almost Everything Right
Here is what makes this loss sting more than the previous ones.
KKR actually batted well tonight. Not just “decent under the circumstances,” well, genuinely, properly well. Ajinkya Rahane came out and smashed 41 off 24 balls. Angkrish Raghuvanshi followed with 45 off 33. Rovman Powell, back in the side and playing with the freedom of a man with a point to prove, hit 39 not out off 24. Cameron Green chipped in with 32 not out off 24. The lower order held. The total was competitive. 181 on this pitch, on this evening, was a number worth defending.
They bowled well, too. Vaibhav Arora struck twice inside the powerplay, silencing the LSG top order before the big score could be built. Cameron Green, who has barely bowled a ball in anger all season, took the massive wicket of Rishabh Pant, removing the one batter in the LSG lineup you simply cannot afford to let settle. Anukul Roy dismissed Ayush Badoni, who went for a big hit over the off-side and found Rinku Singh at long-off. Sunil Narine returned from illness and looked sharp, turning the ball and squeezing the scoring. LSG were 128 for 7 and KKR were inching towards their first win of the season.
Then, a 23-year-old nobody who had circled on their teamsheet walked to the crease and took the game away from them.
Mukul Choudhary: The Name Everyone Is Googling Tonight
Let us be clear about the situation Mukul Choudhary walked into. Seven wickets down. Fifty-four runs to get. Eden Gardens in full voice. KKR’s bowlers are hunting blood.
He did not flinch.
Off Vaibhav Arora, he pulled a helicopter six over long-on. Then a four through deep square leg. Then another maximum off Kartik Tyagi. These were not lucky hits. They were not desperate heaves that happened to clear the rope. They were calculated, clean, and completely in control. The kind of shots you play when you have worked out exactly what the bowler is going to do and you have already decided what you are doing about it.
He rotated strike intelligently between the boundaries, kept the scoreboard moving during the tight overs, and never let the required rate balloon out of control. For a batter coming in at seven with the match in the balance, that level of clarity is remarkable. Most players at that stage of their IPL career either swing and miss or freeze up completely.
Mukul Choudhary did neither. He just played cricket.
By the time it was done, LSG had crossed the line with 3 wickets in hand and Mukul Choudhary had become the story of the night. Not Pant. Not Shami. Not Markram. The kid is batting at seven.
How The Chase Actually Unfolded
Mitchell Marsh came out swinging, hammering Navdeep Saini for 18 runs in a single over. LSG blasted 31 off the first three overs and it looked, briefly, like the chase might be over before it started. The KKR crowd went quiet. The bowling looked thin.
Then Arora struck twice and everything changed. Two wickets in the powerplay, the partnership broken, the run rate suddenly under pressure. Green then produced the moment of the match, getting the ball to do enough to take the edge of Pant, who had been pacing the chase sensibly alongside Badoni. When that wicket fell the crowd erupted. This felt like a different KKR to the one that had stumbled through the first three games of the season.
More wickets followed. LSG’s middle order, which has been quietly inconsistent all tournament, crumbled under the pressure of a disciplined bowling effort. At 128 for 7, the math was brutal and simple. KKR were inching closer. LSG batters were crumbling.
And then, as has happened to KKR so many times already this season in so many different ways, the game slipped.
KKR’s Season: Four Games, Zero Wins, Infinite Questions
One point. From four games. For a franchise that has won this competition three times and is managed by people who know what winning looks like.
The batting tonight was the best it has been all season. That much is genuine. Rahane and Raghuvanshi building a real partnership was the kind of thing KKR fans have been desperate to see. Powell hitting clean at the death without the madness of run-outs and miscommunications that too. And the bowling, for large stretches of that chase, was what a defending bowling attack should look like.
None of it was enough. Because Mukul Choudhary existed tonight.
That is the thing about T20 cricket that coaches and captains understand and fans sometimes forget. You can do everything right and still lose to someone nobody expected. The margins are that thin. The game is that unpredictable.
Shami had troubled Finn Allen early, and Allen had eventually edged to Prince Yadav near the deep third man boundary another cameo that ended before it became anything. Allen’s inability to convert starts has been a running subplot all season. Narine was back and looked useful. Green bowled. Cameron Green actually bowled and took a wicket.
There were good signs tonight. Real ones. That is nothing.
But the points table does not care about good signs. And right now, KKR have one point from four games and are staring at a season that could slip completely out of reach if they cannot find a way to win a close match.
What LSG Has That KKR Does Not Right Now
Form. Belief. And apparently, Mukul Choudhary.
Rishabh Pant’s side have now won two of their three completed matches and both wins have come in different ways one through Pant’s own brilliance finishing a chase at the death, one through a lower-order batter nobody expected stepping up when the match was seemingly lost. That variety of winning tells you something about a team’s character.
LSG had already won two of the three previous matches played against KKR at Eden Gardens, and tonight extended that advantage in the most dramatic way possible.
They go to six points. They go to the top half of the table. They go with momentum that is now very real.
KKR go back to the drawing board. Again. Still searching. Still winless. Still one of the most talented squads in the tournament and somehow unable to get over the line when it matters.
The season is not over. But it is getting uncomfortable very quickly inside that dressing room.
And somewhere in the Lucknow dugout tonight, a 23-year-old batter is realising that he just became the reason his team won a match that everyone had already written off as a KKR victory.
Remember the name. Mukul Choudhary.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
