The 47th IPL match between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Delhi Capitals saw the former team setting a daunting target of 220 for the capitals and Shreyas Iyer’s team failing to complete the chase. Delhi Capitals got hardly any success in the match and were succumbed to just 131 runs in 19 overs.
Classic from Saha
Everyone in the top order of Sunrisers Hyderabad contributed with the bat in this very important encounter. The skipper showed the way along with his new opening partner, Wriddhiman Saha. Warner scored 34-ball 66 and got involved in a 107-run partnership with Saha. Once Warner was gone, Saha found an ally in Manish Pandey. Pandey remained not out with 31-ball 44 runs whereas Saha was dismissed in the 15th over after scoring a brilliant 45-ball 87.
Saha’s innings had 12 fours and two maximums; he batted with a strike rate of 193.33. His extraordinary efforts eventually helped the Hyderabad team to set a massive target for the mighty Delhi Capitals. Wriddhiman Saha has played only two matches in this season and registered one of best innings. After Saha’s dismissal Pandey kept the momentum on as Kane Williamson also remained unbeaten with 10-ball 11.
Rashid Khan continues fighting away
Delhi Capitals found it difficult to chase down 220 runs and the pressure started increasing from the very beginning. SRH bowlers kept it tight throughout. Rashid Khan, once again was the top performer from the unit with three wickets for just seven runs in his four overs. Khan, in fact, broke a 40-run partnership between Shimron Hetmyer (16) and Ajinkya Rahane (26) after two quick dismissals. Rashid Khan sent both of them in the same over in space of one run and ensured SRH never lose track. Almost everyone bowled economically and took wickets in regular gaps. Apart from Khan, Sandeep Sharma and T Natarajan were the successful SRH bowlers with two wickets each conceding 27 and 26 runs respectively. Shahbaz Nadeem, Jason Holder, and Vijay Shankar also scalped one wicket each.
Big NRR blow for Delhi
Delhi Capitals bowlers hardly had any success. The Purple Cap holder Kagiso Rabada went for 54 runs in his four overs and failed to take any wicket. Sunrisers Hyderbad lost only two wickets as Anrich Nortje and Ravi Ashwin took one each. The bowlers were expensive whereas the Capitals batters, during the chase failed to contribute with big knocks.
Their star player, Shikhar Dhawan who earlier had two back-to-back IPL centuries was gone for a duck this time and the Capitals were 1/1 in the first over of DC innings. Delhi Capitals could never recover from this initial blow and lost wicket at regular intervals. The highest score came from Rishabh Pant who added 36 runs off 37 balls. There were fireworks from Tushar Deshpande (20* off 9) at the end but that didn’t help much. Chasing 220 runs was always going to be impossible after the collapse in the top order.
While the result did not cost the Capitals much in term of points, the side had to move down to 3rd place from 2nd due to poor Net Run Rate after being all-out for just 131 runs against Sunrisers Hyderabad.