POST MATCH ANALYSIS
Follow UsSunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) saw Jonny Bairstow leave for England few days ago and now have to say goodbye to arguably their best ever batsman David Warner as he begins his preparation for the upcoming World Cup with Australia. Warner leaves SRH after scoring 692 runs from 12 matches at 69.20 and a strike-rate of 143.86. Not just that, he has hit eight fifties and a century, including a well compiled 81 off 56 in this match against Kings XI Punjab (KXIP). With this win, SRH have further consolidated their pace in the fourth place, but with two games to go, Warner’s departure will leave a huge void in SRH’s batting, which will be hard to fill.
Warner had yet another opening partner in Wriddhiman Saha tonight. The duo wasted little time to get settled and went on to score 77 in the powerplays, which is the highest this season so far. KXIP were wayward with their bowling as well. They gave too many extras in the first six overs and at the end of the innings, their tally of 20 extras is now the highest this season.
Once Saha was dismissed, in-form Manish Pandey looked to continue his good run and added 82 for the second wicket with Warner. Warner in the meantime had scored his eighth consecutive against KXIP and looked all set to get a big one, which would have been a good send-off for the Aussie. But, Warner fell for 81 off 56 and gave his team an excellent platform from which they could have scored in excess of 200. KXIP looked like they could restrict SRH to under 200, but a 26-run over from Mujeeb Zadran (4-0-66-0), turned things around for SRH, who finished with 212 for 6 – Which was well above par at Hyderabad.
KL Rahul is no stranger to playing a lone hand and he was once again put in that predicament after he started losing partners one after the other. Mayank Agarwal (27) and Nicholas Pooran (21) threatened for a while, but in a bid to go big, they lost their wickets. David Miller’s poor season continued after he holed out for just 11. Rashid Khan had the best game of the season, picking up 3 wickets for 21 to completely break KXIP’s backbone.
KXIP had lost half their side at the end of 13 overs, still needing a further 106 runs to win from the remaining seven overs. Rahul was the only hope for KXIP, but with no hard-hitters to follow at the other end, it was a little too much for him to do and in the end, KXIP were comprehensively beaten. He was dismissed for 79 off 56 and lives to fight another day. In the end, KXIP suffered a 45-run loss has dented their chance of making it to the top 4 to a certain extent.
While SRH’s place in the playoffs is not confirmed, but this win certainly takes them one step closer. They will now have to do it without both Bairstow and Warner, which makes it all the more difficult.
Momentum shift
In the 18th over, when SRH scored 26 runs off Mujeeb, their win% went up by 7 and stood at 86%, which was their highest win% in the entire innings. They eventually went on to post a score in excess of 200 due tho that over from the Afghanistan spinner.
Rashid’s double strike in the 13th over to remove Manish Pandey and David Miller reduced KXIP’s win% to just 2 and it never really went up from there given the magnitude of the chase.
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