IPL 2018: Match 28, RR vs SRH - Who Said What

Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) literally have champion bowlers up their sleeves as they defended another low total for their team. The hosts Rajasthan Royals (RR) were left wondering about their strategy an it was surprising that they never tried to up the ante. Rather they were not allowed by the ever so disciplined visiting bowlers. They kept coming at batsmen all the time and picked wickets. However, Sunrisers now top the table with 6 win after eight matches and are looking favourites to qualify for the playoffs.

The visitors opted to bat first after winning the toss as they handed over a debut to Alex Hales by addressing their issues in the batting department. The skipper Kane Williamson showed his class yet again as he scored yet another half-century. He was aptly supported by Hales who didn’t give away his wicket despite struggling to get boundaries for the most part of his innings. The middle-order failed to chip in at the death as it has now become the territory of Jofra Archer who once again nailed his yorkers perfectly and returned with the figures of 3/26.

Williamson’s gritty knock of 63 runs helped Sunrisers post a competitive but under par total of 151 runs after their 20 overs as they also lost 7 wickets on the way. The chase began in a not so good fashion with Rahul Tripathi adding yet another failure to his record this season. But the parntnership between Rahane and Sanju Samson kept them ahead in the game always. The latter though was dismissed in the 10th over which brought the visitors back in the game big time.

Royals’ final assault never came in the end, with the likes of Rashid Khan, Siddarth Kaul bowling brilliantly during the course of the game. In the end, they could only muster 140 runs and fell agonisingly short of the target by 11 runs.

SRH skipper and Man of the Match, Kane Williamson said:

I think the contribution from the batting order on that surface to get 150, which was a par total, and then to squeeze well with out bowling like we have in the last couple of games was incredible. They did get off to a good start, put us under pressure but it was nice for us to bounce back in the second half.

The surface was definitely on the slower side, with slow turn and not a lot of bounce. They used the hard length ball well with the big boundaries was something we wanted to incorporate as well in our innings. I thought in the first part we were very good and were able to restrict them to a decent total.

Yusuf’s wicket was fortunate, probably not his best delivery, but was nice to get that wicket at that stage because he (Stokes) is such a dangerous player. The way the guys went out today, we didn’t get that 10-15 more on another challenging surface but we did see an improvement, which we look to carry forward.

T20 is pretty fickle in nature and it is nice to get a few wins on the board; but each game is a tough game. We need to adapt to conditions, not get ahead of ourselves, which have varied a lot and that’s what we aim to build on and do going forward as well.

Alex (Hales) is world class in this format; it was nice for him to get us off to a good start and it was great for him to have that opportunity.

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