Chennai Super Kings vs Kolkata Knight Riders: IPL H2H Record
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Cricket in the Indian Premier League10 min read
Two IPL finals have been contested between Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders, and they have one each. Kolkata took the 2012 title at Chepauk, chasing 190 with Manvinder Bisla making 89 from 48 balls and Jacques Kallis 69. Chennai won the 2021 final in Dubai by 27 runs, Faf du Plessis scoring 86 from 59 balls in a total of 192 for 3.
Everything else in the fixture leans one way. Across all 33 meetings Chennai have won 21 and Kolkata 11, with the 2009 game at Newlands abandoned. The 21-11 gap is the widest of any pairing Chennai have played more than twenty times.
The oddity is where Chennai's wins came from. Nine of the eleven matches at Eden Gardens have produced a result and Chennai have won seven of them. A visiting record of 7-4 at the opponent's home ground, over eighteen years, is the single most difficult number in this fixture for Kolkata to explain away.
Both finals, side by side
| Season | Ground | Batted first | Batted second | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai | CSK 190/3 (20) | KKR 192/5 (19.4) | KKR won by 5 wickets |
| 2021 | Dubai International Cricket Stadium | CSK 192/3 (20) | KKR 165/9 (20) | CSK won by 27 runs |
The 2012 chase remains the largest total Chennai have failed to defend against Kolkata, and it happened at their own ground in a final. The 2012 season page covers the run that took Kolkata there from fifth place the previous year. Nine years later Chennai's 192 in Dubai was almost exactly the same total, defended comfortably, in a season played largely in the UAE — the 2021 season page has the full context of that split-country campaign.
The overall ledger
| Where | Matches | CSK won | KKR won | No result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chepauk and Ranchi (CSK hosting) | 14 | 10 | 4 | 0 |
| Eden Gardens | 11 | 7 | 4 | 0 |
| Neutral and relocated | 8 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
| All matches | 33 | 21 | 11 | 1 |
Kolkata's home return here is four wins in eleven. Chennai's home return is ten in fourteen, counting the Ranchi match of 2014 played when Chepauk was unavailable. Neither side has ever taken both legs of a season and then won a third meeting except Chennai in 2021, when they won all three including the final.
Season by season
| Season | Meetings | CSK | KKR | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 2 | 2 | 0 | Both won by Chennai, one on D/L |
| 2009 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Cape Town match abandoned |
| 2010 | 2 | 2 | 0 | |
| 2011 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Both settled by D/L calculations |
| 2012 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Kolkata won the final |
| 2013 | 2 | 2 | 0 | |
| 2014 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2015 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2018 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Chennai's return season |
| 2019 | 2 | 2 | 0 | |
| 2020 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Played in the UAE |
| 2021 | 3 | 3 | 0 | Chennai won the final |
| 2022 | 1 | 0 | 1 | |
| 2023 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2024 | 1 | 1 | 0 | |
| 2025 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| 2026 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
Chennai's longest winning sequence in the fixture is four, running from the second leg of 2019 through to the 2021 final via the two UAE seasons. Kolkata have never won more than two consecutively.
Every meeting, 2008 to 2026
| # | Season | Date | Stage | Ground | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2008 | 26 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | CSK won by 9 wickets |
| 2 | 2008 | 18 May | League | Eden Gardens | CSK won by 3 runs (D/L) |
| 3 | 2009 | 25 April | League | Newlands, Cape Town | No result |
| 4 | 2009 | 18 May | League | SuperSport Park, Centurion | KKR won by 7 wickets |
| 5 | 2010 | 16 March | League | Eden Gardens | CSK won by 55 runs |
| 6 | 2010 | 13 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | CSK won by 9 wickets |
| 7 | 2011 | 8 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | CSK won by 2 runs |
| 8 | 2011 | 7 May | League | Eden Gardens | KKR won by 10 runs (D/L) |
| 9 | 2012 | 30 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | KKR won by 5 wickets |
| 10 | 2012 | 14 May | League | Eden Gardens | CSK won by 5 wickets |
| 11 | 2012 | 27 May | Final | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | KKR won by 5 wickets |
| 12 | 2013 | 20 April | League | Eden Gardens | CSK won by 4 wickets |
| 13 | 2013 | 28 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | CSK won by 14 runs |
| 14 | 2014 | 2 May | League | JSCA International Stadium, Ranchi | CSK won by 34 runs |
| 15 | 2014 | 20 May | League | Eden Gardens | KKR won by 8 wickets |
| 16 | 2015 | 28 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | CSK won by 2 runs |
| 17 | 2015 | 30 April | League | Eden Gardens | KKR won by 7 wickets |
| 18 | 2018 | 10 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | CSK won by 5 wickets |
| 19 | 2018 | 3 May | League | Eden Gardens | KKR won by 6 wickets |
| 20 | 2019 | 9 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | CSK won by 7 wickets |
| 21 | 2019 | 14 April | League | Eden Gardens | CSK won by 5 wickets |
| 22 | 2020 | 7 October | League | Sheikh Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi | KKR won by 10 runs |
| 23 | 2020 | 29 October | League | Dubai International Cricket Stadium | CSK won by 6 wickets |
| 24 | 2021 | 21 April | League | Wankhede Stadium | CSK won by 18 runs |
| 25 | 2021 | 26 September | League | Sheikh Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi | CSK won by 2 wickets |
| 26 | 2021 | 15 October | Final | Dubai International Cricket Stadium | CSK won by 27 runs |
| 27 | 2022 | 26 March | League | Wankhede Stadium | KKR won by 6 wickets |
| 28 | 2023 | 23 April | League | Eden Gardens | CSK won by 49 runs |
| 29 | 2023 | 14 May | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | KKR won by 6 wickets |
| 30 | 2024 | 8 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | CSK won by 7 wickets |
| 31 | 2025 | 11 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | KKR won by 8 wickets |
| 32 | 2025 | 7 May | League | Eden Gardens | CSK won by 2 wickets |
| 33 | 2026 | 14 April | League | M. A. Chidambaram Stadium | CSK won by 32 runs |
Kolkata chase, they do not defend
This is the finding that most rewards separating the fixture out from either franchise's overall record. Of Kolkata's eleven wins, nine came batting second. Only two were won defending a total: the 10-run win at Eden Gardens in 2011, decided on a Duckworth-Lewis calculation after rain, and the 10-run win at Abu Dhabi in October 2020. Chennai's split is close to even at ten defended and eleven chased.
| Side | Wins | Won defending | Won chasing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chennai Super Kings | 21 | 10 | 11 |
| Kolkata Knight Riders | 11 | 2 | 9 |
Part of that is simple: Kolkata's two biggest wins in the fixture by any measure — the 2012 final and the 2009 game at Centurion — were both chases of 189 or more, and the IPL's highest successful chases page shows how rare a total of that size was in either of those seasons. But nine from eleven is more than a quirk of scheduling, and it holds across four different Kolkata captaincies.
Totals, and the two rain-shortened games
Chennai own the fixture's highest total, 235 for 4 at Eden Gardens in April 2023, on the way to a 49-run win. Only six innings in the fixture have reached 200, and four of them are Chennai's. The lowest completed total is Kolkata's 108 for 9 at Chepauk in 2019; their 109 all out at Eden Gardens in 2010 is next.
Two entries in the results table need reading carefully. At Eden Gardens on 18 May 2008 Chennai were 55 for 0 after eight overs when the game was called, and won by three runs on the revised target. On 7 May 2011 at the same ground Kolkata were 61 for 2 after ten overs and won by ten runs the same way. Neither is a full-length result and neither is included in the era averages below.
| Period | Full matches | Average first-innings total |
|---|---|---|
| 2008-2013 | 12 | 143 |
| 2014-2019 | 8 | 156 |
| 2020-2026 | 12 | 170 |
The rise is steady rather than dramatic, which sets this fixture apart from most in the competition. Chepauk and Eden Gardens have both stayed relatively demanding surfaces for batting, and the Eden Gardens records and Chepauk pitch report pages set out why.
Four things worth noting
- Chennai have won three matches in this fixture by two runs or two wickets, and Kolkata none. Small margins have gone one way with unusual consistency.
- Kolkata's largest win by runs is 10, achieved twice. In eighteen years they have never beaten Chennai by more than ten runs while batting first.
- The 2022 meeting at the Wankhede was the only season in which the two played once and Kolkata won it.
- Chennai's 235 for 4 in 2023 came at Eden Gardens, not at home, and is 33 runs clear of the highest total Kolkata have made in the fixture.
The Chennai Super Kings franchise page and the Kolkata Knight Riders franchise page carry the squad and honours detail this page deliberately leaves out, and the IPL hub indexes every season from 2008. Chennai's record against Royal Challengers Bengaluru is the other fixture in which they hold a double-figure lead. Ravichandran Ashwin's CSK career spans the years of both finals. For how the league fits into the wider game in the country, see the cricket in India hub, and the 2023 season page covers the campaign that produced the fixture's record total.
Sources and method
Results, dates, grounds, innings scores and margins come from this site's IPL match lists for the seasons 2008 to 2026, verified against ESPNcricinfo scorecards. The two individual innings named in the opening paragraphs — Bisla's 89 and du Plessis's 86, both player-of-the-match awards in finals — were checked against the published scorecards for those matches rather than taken from a summary.
Conventions: the 33 total includes the abandoned 2009 fixture at Newlands, listed as a no result and left out of the win columns. The two Duckworth-Lewis results from 2008 and 2011 count as wins in the ledger but are excluded from the first-innings averages, since neither innings ran its full length. Where Chennai hosted at Ranchi in 2014, that match is counted as a Chennai home game.
What this page does not attempt: a leading run scorer or wicket taker across these 33 matches specifically. The dataset behind the tables records match results, not individual ball-by-ball returns, and rather than approximate those aggregates we have left them out. Figures are current as of 27 August 2026.