With Ishan Kishan leading the way with the bat and Heinrich Klaasen and Abhishek Sharma also playing key roles SRH had enough on the board to challenge the defending champions. SRH managed to keep the dangerous Royal Challengers Bengaluru batting line-up in check throughout the chase of 256 runs.
“Boys are going to enjoy it tonight,” is what Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper Pat Cummins said at the toss, and his batters did just that. If anything, Royal Challengers Bengaluru bowlers would complain SRH indulged in too much hitting. RCB had plans. When these two sides first met on the opening night of the season, Jacob Duffy cramped the batters for room by hitting a hard length that worked well. They tried a similar ploy to start with, but SRH batters were prepared this time.
Travis Head came up with the plan, giving himself room and fiercely cutting the ball through the cover and point boundaries. For Abhishek, it did not matter much. Like he had been doing all season, it was to see the ball and hit the ball. When it was bowled into the body, he swatted over the leg side. When it was on the off-stump, he smoothly sent it over the long-off boundary.
Rasikh Salam Dar bowled a fierce yorker on the off-stump after seeing Head backing away to give himself room. The delivery uprooted the Aussie’s off-stump and ended the opening partnership. Ishan Kishan came in. ‘Anchor’ is not a word in usage, but if anything comes close to describing that role, it was Ishan’s knock today.
While Abhishek was going all guns blazing, Ishan took his time and let the other southpaw do the work. (BCCI/CREIMAS Photo)
When these two sides met in Bengaluru earlier, Ishan scored 80 from just 38 deliveries that night; all SRH did was attack, and they could only get 201. But today the evolution was there to be seen. Although his score was 79 off 46 balls—a lower strike rate compared to that day—his gear changing was precise. While Abhishek was going all guns blazing, Ishan took his time and let the other southpaw do the work.
After Abhishek fell, Kishan eased off the pressure with some boundary hitting when Heinrich Klaasen did not start as fluently as he would have liked. Klaasen was on five from nine deliveries, and then he hit a six against Josh Hazlewood off a pace off delivery into his favourite mid-wicket area. That kick-started his innings. He scored 40 runs from the next 14 deliveries. It has not been too often this season that RCB has looked rattled on the field, but while the partnership between Kishan and Klaasen was going at a frantic pace, the bowling looked short of ideas. Klaasen-Kishan put on 113 runs from just 48 deliveries.
Heinrich Klaasen and Ishan Kishan put on 113 runs from just 48 deliveries. (BCCI/Creimas Photo)
Template defence
Once the runs were put on the board, the defence fell into the SRH template. Venkatesh Iyer started the chase by going ballistic. Cummins and wrist-spinner Shivang Kumar took a severe beating. But once again, Eshan Malinga, who has been a nightmare for the batters here at Uppal, broke the partnership with his cunning variations. It was a delivery dug into the surface, which Iyer mishit to Abhishek at cow-corner. Sakib Hussain got Virat Kohli with a slower ball. And Malinga returned in the ninth over to dismiss Devdutt Padikkal, who was racing through his innings; the left-hander clipped one straight to Abhishek at the same position.
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And around that 10th over mark, like it has been happening all season here, with the slightly oldish ball, the wicket started to stop a bit. SRH bowlers used the into-the-surface slower balls, suffocating both Rajat Patidar and Krunal Pandya. SRH identified the short ball as the length to contain the RCB skipper, and he looked in quite a bit of discomfort. For his first 30 runs, he hit only three boundaries and no sixes, and his half-century came in 37 deliveries.
Krunal, at the other end, did not show any urgency or proactiveness to go after the bowling. With the required rate touching 20s, the shots chosen were quite safe. However, RCB only needed to get over 166 runs to finish in the top two, which is what was at stake for both teams coming into the game, and the visitors ticked their box.
Brief Scores: SRH 255/4 in 20 overs (Abhishek Sharma 56, Ishan Kishan 79, Heinrich Klaasen 51; Rasikh Salam Dar 2/52) beat RCB 200/4 in 20 overs (Venkatesh Iyer 44, Rajat Patidar 56, Krunal Pandya 41 not out; Eshan Malinga 2/33) by 55 runs.
