Kings XI Punjab held their nerves and managed to scrape through to a 6 wickets victory against the Sunrisers Hyderabad in the 22nd match of the tournament. The victory was largely built around some sensible bowling by the Punjab bowlers and some good batting by KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal. The Sunrisers Hyderabad bowlers did make a comeback in the final stages of the match but KL Rahul’s composure saw them winning the clash with a delivery to spare.
Sunrisers Hyderabad struggled with the bat in hand
Earlier in the day Hyderabad huffed and puffed their way to a competitive score of 150 in their allotted 20 overs. They lost Jonny Bairstow early which never really allowed David Warner to play his natural game. He tried to build his game and in the process to some extra time to settle in. He rotated the strike but the big shots weren’t coming which never really allowed Hyderabad to push for a big score despite not losing many wickets.
David Warner went on to score 70 but it came in 62 deliveries which hampered the run rate of the franchise. All the Punjab bowlers were effective and never really allowed SRH to go after the big shots. It was Deepak Hooda who struck a couple of fours and a six to help SRH get to a score of 150 runs. Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammed Shami and Mujeeb-ur-Rahman bagged a wicket each.
Punjab lost the wicket of Chris Gayle after the southpaw struck a couple of delightful shots. He was dismissed of the first ball of Rashid Khan whom he had smashed all around this same stadium a year ago. He wanted to repeat his heroics but was holed out in the deep. KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal reconstructed the innings with some singles and doubles. The boundaries also came in timely junctures of the game.
Kings XI Punjab held their nerves to clinch a nail-biting victory
Rahul and Mayank Agarwal looked in complete control of proceedings and looked well set to get Punjab over the line with overs to spare. However, after Mayank Agarwal’s dismissal, the floodgates were open for SRH to make a comeback and they did that with style. Sandeep Sharma and Siddharth Kaul bowled two terrific overs to make the calculation 11 of the final over.
Mohammad Nabi bowled 3 good deliveries but KL Rahul was just too good as he smashed a four and took a double to seal the deal for Punjab. They have registered their 4th victory of the tournament. A dejected Bhuvneshwar Kumar spoke at the post-match presentation and revealed what needed to be done in the future matches to get their campaign back on track.
Here are the quotes of Bhuvneshwar Kumar at the post-match presentation
Of course, it is hard but I am pretty happy with the way we bowled with the dew around. It is a bit difficult with yorkers and slower balls, but given the dew, we executed our plans pretty well. The yorker is something you can’t bowl and the bowling plans depend on the length of the boundaries.
When we came to bowl we kept the dew factor out of our minds and all we wanted to do was stretch it to the last over. It is a good thing to get a break now, we can assess what we have done so far.