Sunrisers Hyderabad suffered their 5th straight defeat in this year’s Indian Premier League as they got beaten comprehensively by Kolkata Knight Riders. Kane Williamson’s side has slipped to 8th in the standings, and now with a negative net run rate, their chances of qualifying into the playoff are getting less.
Shreyas Iyer won the toss and elected to bat first at MCA Stadium in Pune. KKR were in trouble at the middle phase of the innings when they lost half of their side inside the 12th over courtesy of some fireworks of bowling from Umran Malik. But a sensational 63 run partnership between Sam Billings and Andre Russell steadied the ship and they get to a very good total of 177. Coming on to chase SRH were very slow to start.
Apart from a couple of promising knocks of Abhishek Sharma and Aiden Markram, SRH batters could not stand in front of the disciplined bowling of the Knight Riders. KKR beat them by 54 runs to stay alive in the competition. Skipper Shreyas Iyer thanks his luck for winning a crucial toss which was really important for this crucial game.
Shreyas said during the post-match presentation, “Our mindset we came within this game was outstanding, we were positive and it was really important to win this toss. Batting first in Pune teams have won a lot of matches. We were going over by over while batting, the plan was to give Russell as much strike as possible and we were praying that he plays the last over because Washington had an over left. It worked out pretty well.”
Let’s look at the talking points of the KKR vs SRH match-
Venkatesh Iyer’s poor season continues
After having a decent knock last game, Venkatesh Iyer failed once again with the bat and got out on a single-digit score once again. The all-rounder was retained by KKR this season, but his bowling has also been less effective. With the bat, he has managed only 182 runs from 11 innings with a very poor average of 18.20.
A fiery spell from Umran Malik in the KKR Vs SRH game
The 22-year-old speedster brought his side back into the game with a 3 wicket haul spell. Malik was all over the KKR top-order and picked up Rahane, Rana and Shreyas Iyer’s wicket and of course, once again delivered the fastest ball of the match.
The Andre Russell show
The iconic Jamaican came into the crease when KKR were in trouble in the middle overs and like many other countless games, once again he rescued their innings with an unbeaten 49 off 28 balls. This inning was included with 3 fours and 4 maximums, three of them came in the last over against Washington Sundar. This innings took his total runs to over 2000 in the IPL, making him the fastest to reach this milestone in terms of balls taken.
In the second innings, the 34-year-old gave KKR the early breakthrough by taking the important wicket of Kane Williamson in the last over of the powerplay. He also chipped in with two more wickets in the death overs to take his tally to 17 wickets, his best tally in an IPL season. Russell also became only the 5th player in the history of IPL to score over 300 runs alongside taking more than 15 wickets in a single campaign, Shane Watson (2008), Dwayne Bravo (2012), Jacques Kallis (2012, 2013) and Sunil Narine (2018).
