Gujarat Lions will be having a second shot to make it to their maiden IPL final in their maiden IPL season, after losing to RCB in the first qualifier. Sunrisers Hyderabad on the other end will also be playing this qualifier in the quest to make it to their first ever IPL final (Deccan Chargers have won the IPL final once). SRH made it to this qualifier after beating KKR in the eliminator.

David Warner won the toss and chose to bowl first. Lions opened this match with a new opening pair to bring in a surprise element, but the experiment failed as the new opener Eklavya Dwivedi lost his wicket in the first over itself. Captain Raina couldn’t contribute much either. It was the contribution from McCullum, Karthik and Finch who steadied the Lions innings to ensure a good score of 162 at the end of 20 overs.

SRH got off to a poor start as Dhawan was run-out for a duck and Henriques could only manage 11 runs. Despite the team having lost early wickets, their scoring rate didn’t come down as Warner was striking the ball well from the other end. While Warner played strongly from one end, he was a denied a good support from the other. After the top order failure, Yuvraj Singh and Deepak Hooda in the middle order also departed cheaply. With half the team back in the pavilion and just 84 on the board in 12.3 overs, things started to get tough for SRH.

Finally, Warner found a reliable batting partner in Bipul Sharma, he not only supported Warner, but all striked few big shots to get some pressure off his captain. Both of them put together a partnership of over 40 runs in just 4 overs.

Here’s a look at some of the interesting numbers and stats from this match –

Opening Issues – Last 5 opening stands of Gujarat Lions hasn’t gone past the single digit score. The best being 9 runs. In this match, Lions opening stand lasted only for 7 runs.

Pace Attack – Off all the wickets taken by the SRH bowlers, only 5 have come off spinners. This shows the strength of SRH pace bowling.

Contribution from all – 5 batsmen from the Gujarat Lions team have scored over 300 runs. No other team has more than 3 batsmen scoring over 300 runs this IPL. This shows that all players have contributed to the teams win. 5 player of Lions to score over 300 runs are – Suresh Raina, Aaron FInch, Brendon McCullum, Dinesh Karthik and Dwayne Smith.

Death over specialist – Bhuvneshwar Kumar has picked 23 pickets this season. 9 wickets of those have come in the 20^th over.

First duck after 61 innings – Shikhar Dhawan got out for a duck after 61 T20 innings.

2^nd to 700 runs – David Warner becomes 2^nd player after Virat Kohli to score over 700 runs this IPL season. Overall he is the 4^th batsmen to do so after Hussey, Gayle and Kohli.

Powerplay champion – Warner has scored 435 runs in Powerplays this season. This is the most number of runs a player has scored in powerplays in an IPL season. Warner is the only player to score over 400 runs in powerplays. Previous best was by Gilchrist in 2009, he scored 382 runs.

2^nd highest run scorer in any IPL season – David Warner is the 2^nd highest run scorer this season after Kohli. Warner now has scored 2^nd highest number of runs in any particular IPL season. Kohli tops the list with 919 runs.

2^nd finalist of IPL 2016 – SRH are the second finalists of IPL 2016 after RCB. Final will be played on 29^th May 2016.