It was a dead rubber of a game in the Indian Premier League as both Sunrisers Hyderabad and Punjab Kings went against each other in the final group game of this season. Both the teams were already knocked out before playing this match. SRH had a stand-in skipper in Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the absence of Kane Williamson. Bhuvi won the toss and elected to bat first at Wankhede.
The batting did not click for SRH apart from Abhishek Sharma, whose 43 helped them post 157. PBKS chased the total down convincingly with 5 overs to spare. Shikhar Dhawan and Liam Livingstone played some scintillating shots to help their team finish on a winning note. SRH skipper Bhuvneshwar insisted that they were many runs short with the bat and the management have to look to sort out their weaknesses ahead of the next campaign.
“Good feeling (on being the captain), but it would have been better if we had won the match. I would not say we were a few runs short, we were many short… with them winning with 5 overs left, but we had to field better, didn’t take our chances and there were fumbles, but this was the last match of the season and that does have an effect,” Bhuvneshwar said in the post-match presentation.
“We won 5 on the bounce and had the momentum, but it didn’t go our way and we pretty much lost all our matches in the second half of the tournament. We will have to look at our squad and the management will have to work out the weaknesses ahead of the next season,” he said.
Let’s look at the talking points of the SRH vs PBKS match in the Indian Premier League 2022 season’s final group game-
Abhishek Sharma gave SRH another promising start
The 21-year-old has been the bright light for SRH this season. The left-handed batter was supported heavily by the team management and he has played all the matches opening the batting for them for the first time. Against PBKS, he scored 43 off 32 balls to take his total runs tally to 426 this season at an overall strike rate of 133.
Harpreet Brar wins it for Punjab
PBKS’s left-arm spinner had a good night with the ball as he picked up 3 crucial SRH wickets to take his team to the front foot. Brar dismissed inform Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathy and Aiden Markram with all the different kinds of deliveries which shows he got some tricks in his locker even though he bowls in a very orthodox way. He was named Man of the Match for a winning performance.
Mayank Agarwal’s poor season ends with another no-show in SRH vs PBKS
PBKS skipper had one of the worst seasons with the bat even though he got some praise for his selfless captaincy. PBKS needed some big runs from their skipper which Mayank failed to do in 13 attempts. Against SRH, he got unsettled right at the start against a fiery delivery from Umran Malik which hit him on the ribs. He got out soon after that making only 1. Overall Mayank has contributed just 196 runs in 13 innings which is one of the main reasons why PBKS could not qualify.
