Sunrisers Hyderabad won the match last night beating Kings XI Punjab at their home ground, Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad.
Sunrisers Hyderabad proved it once again that they are the defending champions and can defend any low total. The team won the match beating KXIP by 13 runs.
KXIP won the toss and chose to bat first. SRH gave the target of 132 runs to KXIP. Both of the team gave an amazing performance as far as bowling is concerned but the team failed to create the magic with their batting skills.
In the first innings, the players of Kings XI Punjab tried every bit and didn’t let the players of Sunrisers Hyderabad score a huge number at the scoreboard.
Ankit Rajpoot, the young ace-bowler of KXIP stole all the limelight with his great bowling skills. His extra-ordinary bowling techniques helped the team to take five major wickets of SRH.
Manish Pandey scored 54 runs but in 51 balls. Yes, that was the level of bowling today in the match. While the skipper of SRH, Kane Williamson,was sent back to pavilion at zero runs.
In the second innings, KXIP performed well but fell short of 13 runs. KL Rahul scored 32 runs in 26 balls. Rashid Khan took his wicket with a pure leg-spinner’s dream delivery and sent him back to pavilion. On the other hand, Chris Gayle only scored 23 runs in 22 balls.
Man of the match title was given to Ankit Rajpoot who took 5 wickets today, he 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.
The skipper of SRH, Kane Williamson who scored zero runs today 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.”
The skipper of KXIP,
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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