8 greatest IPL innings ever played

2. Suresh Raina, 87 (CSK vs KXIP, 2014)

CSK was chasing a mammoth target of 227 runs, courtesy of Sehwag’s 122 runs. Their walls were against the back as they had lost their first wicket at a score of just 1. Faf Du Plessis went out scoring a golden duck. Nobody thought that CSK had any chance. But then came in Suresh Raina.

Under an immense amount of pressure, Suresh Raina played an innings which is surely one of the best ever. He came out as if he was on a mission and started striking the bowlers all around. Within a few overs, the KXIP’s bowlers didn’t have any idea what to do. He was just toying with them.

Raina went on to score an innings of 87 runs in just 25 balls. One can imagine the kind of mood that he was in by the fact that in the 87 runs, he hit 12 fours and 6 sixes. In other words, out of the 87 runs, he scored 84 runs in boundaries. This fact in itself is mind-boggling.

He scored these runs at a strike rate of 348. Despite the mammoth total that KXIP had set, Raina had turned the odds in favor of CSK. Everybody believed they were going to win until he got run out.

Brendon McCullum called and then tried to send him back, but Raina couldn’t make it in time and the cricketing world was deprived of seeing what could well have turned out to be the best T20 innings ever played in a chase.

In fact, at the rate that he was playing, he would have probably broken the record of the fastest century which is held by Gayle when he scored his 30-ball century.