Travis Head (89*) and Abhishek Sharma (75*) were on the charge once again right from the get go as the Sunrisers Hyderabad wrapped up the chase of 166 with as many as 62 balls to spare. A batting effort that saw the two southpaw openers find as many as 16 fours and 14 sixes.
It was a comprehensive victory for the home team, one that rendered the opposition skipper KL Rahul lost for words in the post-match recap.
“Am lost for words,” Rahul conceded to the host broadcasters. “We have watched that kind of batting on TV. But this is unreal batting. Everything seemed to find the middle of the bat. Kudos to their skills. They have worked hard on their six hitting skills.”
The Lucknow Super Giants captain didn’t shy away from accepting that nothing they tried worked on the duo. “They didn’t give us a chance to know what the pitch played in the second innings. Was hard to stop them as they teed off from ball one. Once you are on the losing side, there are questions marks on the decisions taken.”
Earlier, Rahul had won the toss and opted to bat first at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium. “We were 40-50 runs short. When we lost wickets in the powerplay, we couldn’t get any momentum. Ayush and Nicky batted well to get us to 166. But even if we would have got 240, they could have chased it as well,” Rahul added.
Here’s a stat that presses on how exceptional the effort from SRH was. They took the fewest balls to wrap up a 100 plus chase in IPL history. The previous record was held by the Delhi Capitals against Punjab Kings, who chased down 116 with 57 balls left to be played.
As a result of the win on Thursday, SRH are now third in the points table with 14 points from 12 outings.
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