IPL 2018: Match 25, SRH vs KXIP - Who Said What

Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) have made it a habit now to defend the low totals in this season as they foxed Kings XI Punjab (KXIP) in this game. The bowlers were absolutely magnificent once again as they hunted together against the hapless middle-order of the opponents and made 132 look like 180. Rashid Khan led the way for them by picking the wicket of KL Rahul with a pure leg-spinner’s dream delivery and the rest of the script followed like it was planned for the home side as they won the game by 14 runs handsomely.

The middle-order was untested against the quality bowling attack in the chase and they crumbled under pressure today. While Rashid was almost unplayable, the likes of Shakib Al Hasan, Basil Thampi and Sandeep Sharma kept probing away with wickets at regular intervals. In the end, it was all one-way traffic as the visitors collapsed from being 55/0 to 118/10. It was a heartbreak for them completely as they had messed up the chase like Mumbai Indians (MI) and handed over their second position to SRH easily.

Earlier, it was the bowling of Ankit Rajpoot which had helped Kings XI to restrict SRH to meagre total whose batting was all at sea. It was the extra bounce which troubled them as the youngster bowled extremely well and ended the innings with the figures of 5/14. He scalped the wickets of Kane Williamson and Shikhar Dhawan in the first couple of overs after which Wriddhiman Saha followed suit. It was only due to Manish Pandey’s patient 54-run knock which helped the hosts to reach 132.

He was well supported by Yusuf Pathan and Shakib as well as the visitors were absolutely reckless in the field dropping as many as 4 catches and eventually lost the game.

Man of the Match, Ankit Rajpoot said:

It isn’t an easy job. Everyone practice hard and we practice a lot before the games. The wicket was offering a bit of help early on and I made sure I used my variations and hit the right lengths.

I had planned early on about which areas to bowl and it all worked out well. It was my day today and thankfully I got a fifer.

Sunrisers Hyderabad captain, Kane Williamson said:

We haven’t really played on surfaces that are 180 total. We wanted more from our batters and today 150-160 would have been a competitive total The Kings XI bowled really, really well, but the boys fought really hard. It’s nice to be able to defend this totals.

We didn’t bowl well in the powerplay, but we did well to squeeze it towards the end. We want to be a little bit smarter with the bat. It’s about getting 145s and 155s on this kind of surfaces. Competitive totals on these kind of surfaces.

The bowlers have been operating very well, they know their roles very well. We are fortunate with our bowling depth. Very lucky to have the local talent. Some good tough decisions to make going into the next few matches.

You always want more, but the boys have been fantastic in the way they fought with the ball especially on this kind of a pitch. We want to maintain the same trend for the rest of the tournament.

Kings XI Punjab captain, R Ashwin said:

From where we were we should have really put this game away. It is disappointing. It was not the greatest of wickets and we succumbed to it. These losses can happen in this format and these sort of games do happen in IPL, we have to move on.

We need to address our fielding. It is always difficult to catch under the lights but there are no excuses, we are professional cricketers and we have to put it behind and work harder.

This 7 days gap is good for us, we will try to regroup and come back stronger. Rashid bowled really well, he is a world class bowler and we lost wickets against him in the middle overs.

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