NEWS
Follow UsSunrisers Hyderabad have taken the ongoing season of the Indian Premier League (IPL) by storm, and the story wasn’t different in the 57th game of this season, played on May 8 (Wednesday) at the Uppal stadium in Hyderabad. Runs rained like cats and dogs when the team in orange batted.
However, for their opposition, Lucknow Super Giants, it was as if they were playing on a different surface altogether as they huffed and puffed their way to 165/4 in 20 overs. SRH openers Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma made a mockery of that target by chasing it down in just 9.4 overs - which is a record for the fewest balls taken to chase down a 150+ target in T20s.
Notably, Head and Sharma have been the best openers in this competition by a long margin. While Sharma has scored 309 runs at a strike rate of 203.3, Head has botched up 533 runs at 201.9. They have scored 676 runs at an average of 67.6 while striking at 229.9. They are much better than the next best opening partnership (Phil Salt and Sunil Narine) in all the three metrics mentioned above.
Speaking about his batting partner Sharma after the game in the press conference, Head extolled his virtues as a batter and christened him as a great prospect for Indian cricket.
“The partnership with Abhi [Abhishek Sharma] has been fantastic. He’s such an exciting talent for Indian cricket. We complement each other so well, and he’s very, very enjoyable to be around; he’s so excited and thinks about the game, and yeah, he’s got a lot of energy, so it’s a great partnership to be involved in,” Head remarked.
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When asked further if this rich vein of form holds him in good stead for the upcoming World Cup in the Caribbean, Head preferred to be cautiously optimistic as his current runs don’t give him a guarantee of performance. However, Head was pleased with his batting against spin on the night, as he scored 55 runs on just 20 balls against the LSG tweakers.
“Whenever you’re playing you wanna be as consistent as you can, you want to be getting runs. It’s nice to be among the runs and playing well. That won’t guarantee anything in the West Indies but it gives me the best chance to be in a very good mindset. Working hard on training, and I think we face a fair bit of spin in the Caribbean, and wickets might become tougher as the tournament goes,” Head added.
“I was so very pleased with how I played spin tonight. Things I’m working on in training are somewhat working at the moment, but I'll try and stay relaxed as I’ve done for the last couple of years and be ready to go.”
With this win, SRH now have 14 points and a healthy net run rate of +0.406 and are third on the points table with two games to go.
