SRH vs RR highlights: Bhuvneshwar Kumar, on Thursday (May 2), held his nerve and defended one run off the final ball to power Sunrisers Hyderabad to a thrilling 1-run win over table-toppers Rajasthan Royals at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium. Chasing 202, RR finished their innings on 200/7 to suffer their second defeat in IPL 2024.
RR’s chase was off to a terrible start as Bhuvneshwar Kumar dismissed Jos Buttler and Sanju Samson for ducks in the very first over. Yashasvi Jaiswal and Riyan Parag then steadied the ship and batted RR to a strong position by sharing a big stand of 134 runs for the third wicket.
T Natarajan broke the stand in the 14th over by dismissing Jaiswal for 67. In the 16th over, Pat Cummins sent back Parag for 77 to revive SRH’s hopes. Shimron Hetmyer and Rovman Powell shared a 22-run stand before the former was dismissed by Natarajan in the 18th over.
On the first ball of the 19th over, Cummins dismissed Dhruv Jurel to reduce RR to 182 for 6 and turned the game on its head. On the second ball, he conceded a single before bowling three dots in a row to Powell. On the last ball, Powell hit a six to bring down the equation to 13 runs from the final over.
Bhuvneshwar started by conceding a single to Ravichandran Ashwin before Powell hit him for 2, 4, 2 and 2. On the final ball, RR needed two runs but Powell was given out lbw as he failed to make any contact with the ball.
SRH vs RR: SRH innings
Earlier in the game, half-centuries from Nitish Reddy and Travis Head helped SRH recover from a poor start and post a competitive total of 201/3 in 20 overs after their skipper Pat Cummins won the toss and opted to bowl first.
Head and Abhishek Sharma could not bat in their usual aggressive manner in the powerplay as they added 25 runs in as many balls for the first wicket. Avesh Khan broke the stand by dismissing Sharma for 12. Sandeep Sharma then dismissed Anmolpreet Singh for run-a-ball five to reduce SRH to 35 for 2 in the final over of the powerplay.
Reddy and Head then steadied the ship. The duo started their partnership cautiously before Head broke the shackles in the ninth over by hitting Yuzvendra Chahal for two sixes and a four. In the next two overs, Reddy hit two more sixes to get into the groove. In the 12th over, Head reached his fifty off 37 balls.
Reddy finally got going in the 13th over by taking Chahal to the cleaners. The right-handed batsman smashed the leg-spinner for two sixes and as many fours to to race away to 42 runs off 25 balls. The partnership finally came to an end in the 15th over when Head was dismissed by Avesh Khan.
The southpaw departed after scoring 58 runs and sharing 96-run stand with Reddy. Reddy completed his fifty off 30 balls in the 16th over. He and Heinrich Klaasen helped SRH collect as many as 70 runs in the last five overs and finish with a 200-plus total. Reddy remained unbeaten on 76 off 42 while Klaasen scored 42 not out off 19 balls.
SRH vs RR scorecard:
