Calcutta: Rashid Khan's trademark 'airplane' celebration has been the result of a request from his nephews that he perform it each time he took a wicket.
The Afghanistan leg spinner performed the act thrice on Friday as the Kolkata Knight Riders ended their IPL XI campaign with a 13-run loss in Qualifier 2.
Sunday's final thus pits the Chennai Super Kings against the Sunrisers Hyderabad, who ended their four-match losing streak.
The Eden mourned Knight Riders' departure but celebrated Rashid's success in style. They had been witness to a magical spell that led to the home team's doom.
Rashid has shown amazing control and variation in this IPL and Friday was no different. He bowled with a lot of guile, mixing his googlies intelligently and always keeping the batsmen guessing.
This was after he had smashed an unbeaten 34 off 10 balls that effectively made the difference between the two teams. Add to it Rashid's two catches and a run out that ended the home team's ambitions.
The Knight Riders' hopes lay in the fact that the average winning first-innings score at the Eden this season has been 193. A target of 175 was considered to be achievable under the circumstances.
What couldn't be ignored was that the Sunrisers defended scores under 150 thrice this season. It was a matter of how well the Knight Riders fared in the Powerplay overs.
The explosive Sunil Narine ensured the Knight Riders didn't have to worry much as he gave very little chance to the bowlers. Throwing caution to the winds, Narine and Chris Lynn took the Sunrisers attack to the cleaners as they raced to 67 for one in the first six overs. Even the likes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar wasn't spared, not to mention Siddharth Kaul and Khaleel Ahmed. But Narine's profligacy ended in the hands of Carlos Brathwaite.
That hardly had any effect as Lynn and Nitish Rana carried on in style till Rana was run out. At 87 for two in the ninth over, it seemed a cakewalk for the hosts. But Rashid put a spanner in their works.
His first over, the team's seventh, yielded just three. The next three produced 16 (4-0-19-3) more runs but sent a shiver down the Knight Riders' spine as he removed Robin Uthappa, Chris Lynn and Andre Russell.
Robin paid the penalty for attempting an over ambitious reverse sweep, Lynn chose the wrong ball to sweep and Russell was done in by the turn.
In between, Shakib-al Hasan removed Karthik to end the hosts' challenge.
It remains a mystery why the Sunrisers failed to recognise Rashid's batting potential as he played an absolute blinder to set it up for them. Till the 18th over it had looked that the Sunrisers would barely manage to cross 150, but once Rashid took 24 off the final over by Prasidh Krishna, the contest was evenly balanced.
Rashid's last over heroics included two boundaries and two sixes. A flick over deep square leg, after stepping outside off stump, that resulted in a six will be cherished for long.
Wriddhiman Saha, who replaced another local boy Sreevats Goswami, contributed a useful 35 off 27 balls but the innings wasn't as smooth as he would have desired.
