Sunrisers Hyderabad on Wednesday defeated Punjab Kings by nine wickets, registering their first win in this year’s IPL.
Batting first, Punjab Kings could only manage 120 all out in 19.4 overs. Shahrukh Khan and Mayank Agarwal were their top scorers with scoring 22 runs each. Khaleel Ahmed and Rashid Khan played key roles in destroying Punjab’s batting. Khaleel finished with a spell of 3-21 and 1-17. Abhishek Sharma picked up two wickets.
Sunrisers Hyderabad had no difficulties as they achieved the target by losing just one wicket with 8 balls to spare. Jonny Bairstow remained at 63, while skipper David Warner played a knock of 37 runs in as many balls.
Reacting to his side’s defeat, KL Rahul said, “It was tough to adapt but we knew, having watched the games, what to expect. We tried to get used to the conditions as quickly as we could but we were 10-15 runs short. A few batsmen got set and couldn’t get those 30s-40s that could get us through. Hopefully, we learn from this mistake, we have a game in a few days, hopefully we come and win. We knew that Jonny and David are their key batters, you know they’re going to come hard. It’s a little tricky to have attacking fields. Was hoping to get one of them and then attack, that was my thinking. Now looking back that could have been different. Every game from now is important for us and we’ve always been in that situation, where we get in a place where we have to win every game. Not a bad place to be, to be honest.”
Warner, for his part, said, “Very pleasing, the bowlers did a fantastic job to reduce them. The game plan of having them there is to anchor the game. He rotates the strike so well. his impact points against spin are there to see. Abhishek is a young guy coming through, we asked him to bowl a lot more this season, and he did it. Till we went on, he didn’t know he was bowling the first over. I didn’t want to think too much about it. It’s all about starting fresh here again, take the wicket out of it.”
Bairstow was declared Man Of The Match.