Sunrisers Hyderabad know only one way to bat, but for the second straight game, it went pear-shaped for them. Losing wickets in the Powerplay didn’t prompt a rethink and a brief revival – helmed by a young and daring batsman in Aniket Verma – was followed by another collapse in the second half of the innings. A target of 164 was grossly inadequate on the batting-friendly Visakhapatnam surface on Sunday, and Delhi Capitals cantered home.
Cricket, we were told, is a game in which you play to the situation and do what suits the team best at any given moment in time. However, it seems that the maxim doesn’t apply to Sunrisers Hyderabad. When a flurry of wickets might have called for a bit of circumspection, they went harder against DC.
One may argue that with Aniket Verma (74 in 41 balls) – announcing his arrival with some clean hitting, especially against the spinners – and Heinrich Klaasen (32 off 19) launching a counter-attack after SRH were reduced to 37/4 in just over four overs and adding 77 runs in a mere 40 deliveries, the approach was justified. But both batsmen enjoyed slices of luck early in their knocks, and if those chances had been taken, they may have ended with a lot less than the 163 they mustered. As it is, SRH failed to bat out their 20 overs, leaving eight deliveries unused, despite being forced to introduce South African Wiaan Mulder to provide some batting cushion, when they ideally would have liked to bring on a specialist bowler in the second half of the game.
Aniket Verma in action. (Agency)
Aniket bailed out the team once the heavy-hitting top order had gone hard and combusted. He smashed five fours and six sixes, all but three boundaries coming off spinners. DC had Axar Patel, Kuldeep Yadav and leggie Vipraj Nigam in their attack, and it was Aniket who did most of the attacking when they were on. The 23-year-old targeted the straight field whenever the tweakers pitched it up. He was also quick to go for the square boundaries when the ball was even slightly short.
What hurt SRH on the day was that Travis Head – with a quickfire 22 off 12 balls with four fours – was the only other player apart from Aniket and Klaasen to get into double figures, when a slightly tempered-down approach may have got them a few more. But then, one has to take the rough with the smooth, and a team approach has to be fully bought into to be effective.
Cream rises to the top
If ever there was an example of bowlers making the biggest difference in a batter-dominated format, it was provided by Starc and Kuldeep. The Aussie left-arm paceman went for runs in his spell but got rid of Ishan Kishan, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Head, making the 33 runs he conceded in them well worth it. Kishan’s upper-cut found third man and Reddy miscued a slower delivery to be caught on the edge of the circle. But it was the wicket of Starc’s Aussie compatriot that put DC firmly in the box seat. A fast short ball outside off-stump had the left-hander going for a forcing shot square of the wicket. But the delivery was a bit too quick and high for Head, and the resultant top edge was gobbled by KL Rahul behind the stumps. The final figures of 5/35 underline the match-winner that Starc is across forms of the game.
Kuldeep came on when Aniket and Klaasen were on song, and was greeted by an effortless straight six by the South African first ball. From that inauspicious start to finish with figures of 3/22 off four overs shows the wrist-spinner’s skill and mental fortitude. He conceded just one other boundary, a six by Aniket. Abhinav Manohar tried to take Kuldeep down early into his innings, but the ball met the bottom of the blade and resulted in an easy catch to Faf du Plessis at long-on. The wickets of Pat Cummins and, more importantly, Aniket owed as much to the catching and athleticism on the boundary of Jake Fraser- McGurk as much as Kuldeep’s skill. The SRH skipper, after being tied down, tried to mow one over deep mid-wicket, only to find his fellow Australian in the way.
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Heinrich Klaasen in action. (Agencies)
The catch to dismiss Aniket was positively spectacular. It was a swivel-pull and looked, for all money, to be going over the rope when the 22-year-old Aussie raced to his right, jumped high, and had both feet in the air when he got hold of the ball. That was not all. He had to twist and tumble while landing on the ground to ensure that the ball stayed in his hands and he remained within the field of play. Barring the odd blooper, DC were excellent in the field, with Axar and Du Plessis also snaring eye-catching grabs to end the SRH innings.
Making the chase a dawdle
A target of 164 was modest by recent IPL standards, and DC didn’t need to go berserk in the initial overs. Fraser-McGurk was struggling for rhythm, trying to hit the ball too hard. But luckily for DC, Du Plessis was in prime hitting form. It was an exhibition of shots the South African has been known for over the years – making room and hitting through and over the off-side, and when bowlers try to cramp him for room, using the bottom hand to shovel the ball to and over the leg-side. He even hit Cummins straight over his head for a six. Du Plessis’s 27-ball 50 broke the back of the chase and took the pressure off his Australian opening partner. A few subsequent big hits from Fraser-McGurk, Ishan Porel, KL Rahul and Tristan Stubbs got DC home with seven wickets and four overs to spare, even before the second strategy break could be called.
Brief scores: Sunrisers Hyderabad 163 all out in 18.4 overs (Aniket 74, Starc 5/35) lost to Delhi Capitals 166/3 in 16 overs (Du Plessis 50, Zeeshan 3/42) by seven wickets
