Mumbai: Have you ever oscillated in the anxiety of whether or not your wait-listed ticket will be confirmed for a train journey? Surely most of us have gone through that experience.

But if you have not, just take note of the Kolkata Knight Riders’ case at this stage in IPL-V to experience how it feels to have one foot in your desired berth.

The Knights, who lost two back-to-back home matches, roared back in style to humble the Mumbai Indians at their own backward, by 32 runs, on Wednesday. They now have 19 points, one less than table-toppers Delhi DareDevils, with a match to go. But if you think that Gautam Gambhir & Co. have booked a ticket for the playoffs, think again.

The Royal Challengers Bangalore (on 15 points) have two matches left while the Chennai Super Kings (17 points) have one game in hand. If they win their remaining matches, both the teams will reach 19 points each. If the Knights lose their last match, against the Pune Warriors India, on Saturday, they, too, will finish the league stage on 19 points. On the other hand, if the Mumbai Indians (on 18 points) win their ‘final’ match, they will have 20 points and will thus ensure a playoffs berth alongside the DareDevils.

In such a scenario, the Knights, the Royal Challengers and the Super Kings will be fighting for the remaining two playoffs berths. As each team will then have equal number of wins — 9 — net run-rate will play a deciding role. It is then that the Knights’ dreams may be shattered.

But all that falls in the ‘what if’ category. As of now, we can safely say that the Knights are virtually in the playoffs, that they have one foot in the last four.

And if one may add to that, they thoroughly deserve that place. Coming back to Wednesday’s match, the Knights tamed the Mumbai Indians on the shoulders of some inspired performance and astute captaincy from Gambhir.

Defending a modest total of 140 for seven, the Knights bowlers worked wonders to snatch the 32-run victory. The win was also a sweet revenge for the defeat they suffered at the Eden last week. For the record, the Mumbai Indians could not even play the full quota of 20 overs as they were all out for 108 in 19.1 overs.

It was heartening to see that never for a moment the Knights bowlers lost hope against the formidable batting line-up of the home side. After Sachin Tendulkar (27) was bowled in the 11th over by Sunil Narine, the visitors tightened the grip to leave the Mumbai side gasping for breath.

It was indeed a terrific win, thanks to Narine and Kallis. While the South African, who failed with the bat and was hit for 21 runs in his first two overs, suddenly emerged as match-winner late in the innings, Narine remained a mystery for Mumbai batsmen. In 3.1 overs, he gave away only 15 runs to take four valuable wickets.

The West Indian has been the find of the tournament and with 21 wickets in his kitty, is the proud owner of the Purple Cap.

But even after the convincing win, the Knights will return from the match with a few doubts in their minds about their own batting. Frankly, nothing went right for them after they were put to bat by Harbhajan. After Gambhir started the innings on a rousing note hitting Munaf Patel’s first delivery for a boundary, Mumbai struck with a vengeance. In the second over, RP Singh removed Brendon McCullum and Kallis with the second and third balls respectively. The visitors could never really recover from that early setback.

In the first five overs they could score only 25 runs and another 29 in the next five. Gambhir, dropped by Tendulkar on nine at third man boundary, tried his best by scoring 27 off 23 balls, but there was hardly anyone to push up the scoring rate from the other end.

Manoj Tiwary, who hit a couple of glorious shots including a sensational six off Lasith Malinga, played 43 balls to score 41 runs.