Cummins, Bhuvneshwar help SRH snatch thriller by one run

Sunrisers Hyderabad 201 for 3 (Nitish Kumar Reddy 76*, Head 58, Avesh 2-39) beat Rajasthan Royals 200 for 7 (Parag 77, Jaiswal 67) by one run

Till the 19th over of the chase, the highest Rajasthan Royals let the asking rate rise to in a 202 chase was 10.88, which was at the end of the first over. And yet, Sunrisers Hyderabad won by one run. Pat Cummins bowled a superb 19th over followed by Bhuvneshwar Kumar successfully defending 12 in the final over despite the over-rate penalty giving them one fewer boundary rider.

Even until the last ball, RR remained the favourites, needing two to win, but Rovman Powell missed a calf-high full toss to be out lbw. It was Bhuvneshwar who got their defence to a great start, removing Jos Buttler and Sanju Samson in the first over, but Yashasvi Jaiswal and Riyan Parag made the chase look easy with their fifties. When Jaiswal fell, they needed 67 off 39; when Parag left, they needed 43 off 25. Shimron Hetmyer and Powell looked like cruising it, and then two hits went straight to the fielders, and Cummins swooped in.

This was SRH’s fifth score of 200 or more this IPL, but they took the scenic route to get there after choosing to bat. By all accounts, it was a decision informed by their ordinary chasing record and not the conditions. They found themselves having to start off on a sluggish track, which got better as the evening wore off. In fact they themselves scored 153 in their last 12 overs. For the 18 overs of the RR chase, it seemed those first eight overs had cost SRH the game, who now sit among the top four on the points table.

RR spot on with the new ball

Two left-hand batters as openers was the ideal match-up for RR. Trent Boult is anyway a new-ball ace, but now they could bowl R Ashwin too. Boult was denied a wicket first ball as Parag dropped Travis Head at backward point, but the two combined to bowl four overs for just 25 runs. After CSK had shut the SRH openers down with a sweeper on the off side in the powerplay, Boult went the other way, placing two men deep on the leg side and denying them any room. Ashwin was particularly unlucky he didn’t have a wicket as he kept beating the bat.

Avesh Khan and Sandeep Sharma reaped the harvest as they got Abhishek Sharma and Anmolpreet Singh with the first ball each of them bowled, resulting in the slowest powerplay for SRH this year: 37 runs.

Head leads, Reddy follows

After the first time-out, SRH seemed to have decided the pitch had improved. The intent changed visibly. Yuzvendra Chahal was at the receiving end of it as Head pulled and drove him for sixes. He went from 27 off 27 to get to his fifty in 37 balls. Nitish Kumar Reddy followed suit, converting his 5 off 10 into a 30-ball fifty. Even he was ruthless against Chahal, resulting in the second-worst analysis for a spinner in the IPL and also Chahal’s second-worst figures in all T20 cricket: 4-0-62-0.

Reddy, Klaasen close things off

Head again hit a bit of a rut after reaching his fifty, which ended with him playing on while trying to ramp a wide yorker. Not before he was reprieved again, this time by the third umpire when his bat was clearly in the air when the wicket was broken.

However, the real damage to RR came from Reddy and Heinrich Klaasen. Reddy ruined Ashwin’s neat figures by taking two sixes off his final over. Then Klaasen got stuck into Chahal in the 17th over. The RR bowlers were on point with their plans and execution, and it took improvisation and exceptional hitting from Klaasen to take SRH past 200.

Vintage Bhuvneshwar

Bhuvneshwar got the new ball moving, drawing the outside edge from Buttler first ball and going past Samson’s inside edge in the same over. These were his 45th and 46th wickets in the first over in T20 cricket, now only one behind Shaheen Shah Afridi’s 47 and level on joint-top at the IPL with 27.

What seemed the perfect chase

Bhuvneshwar found swing in the second over too, but it met the broad swinging bat of Parag, who hit him for two fours and a six. This was nonchalant, disdainful hitting. Jaiswal was more respectful but just as powerful. His shot at the start of the fourth over went straight into Cummins’ midriff at mid-off, but the SRH captain dropped it. Then Cummins brought himself on to be hit for two fours and monstrous six over long leg. In the next over, Abhishek Sharma dropped Parag at extra cover. It speaks to the consistency in their hitting that the highest the asking rate hovered around 10.

The chaos

Like Head, Jaiswal played on a low full toss as he tried to ramp it. Parag pulled the momentum back by hitting a six two balls later. Small things happened in the 16th over that look huge in hindsight. Parag hit a full toss from Cummins straight to short fine leg. Then he got too close to a half-volley, and holed out to long-on. SRH had a wicket and a rare over without a boundary.

Powell, though, settled RR’s nerves with 15 off the 17th, bowled by Marco Jansen. Hetmyer started the 18th with a huge six. Two dot balls later, he mis-hit a full toss and the game was refusing to die. Dhruv Jurel nailed a leg-side half-volley from Cummins straight down the throat of deep square leg following which Cummins bowled three straight dots at Powell, who hit the last ball for six to tilt the balance again.

After Ashwin handed over the strike to Powell, he used the fielding penalty to take a boundary through the vacant fine-leg region. Poor throws from the outfield allowed Powell take three couples. One more, and it would be over. Perhaps Powell was expecting something close to a yorker because Bhuvneshwar had been nailing them. The full toss took him by surprise, handing RR their first defeat this IPL while chasing.