The Sunrisers Hyderabad continued their fine form against the Gujarat Lions with an emphatic 5 wicket win. Suresh Raina and co. find themselves in a spot of bother as they have now lost 3 games in a row, something that has stuttered their great start.
On the other hand, the Sunrisers continued their excellent form and showed the world that a good bowling department can take you a long way. The Gujarat batsmen had a nightmare of a time while facing Tom Moody’s boys as each and every bowler bowled some fine overs to restrict the strong batting line up of Gujarat to a mere 126.
In the end, the score was chased down in just 19 overs by the SRH. There were several memorable moments from the match that don't fade away, quite like the Axe Signature range of body perfumes. Here are 5 of the best
Double maiden up front
The Gujarat Lions have been the most consistent team in the IPL thus far. Despite being a new team, they have adapted extremely well and find themselves in a good position to make it to the play-offs. The reason for their success has been their great batting during the powerplay overs.
Against SRH, however, they couldn’t do what they are best at.
It was another display of incredible bowling from the Sunrisers Hyderabad, which once again proved their superiority over the other teams. They started the innings with two maidens in the first two overs itself. The first one was bowled by Bhuvneshwar Kumar and the second by Ashish Nehra.
The pressure created from such a start resulted in a wicket as Dwayne Smith lost his to Kumar in the 3rd over.
Kane Williamson’s catch
Catches win matches, but even if they don’t, they win the hearts. A tournament might have raining sixes and stumps flying all around or batsmen tumbling over while attempting to guard their wicket, but a competition without glorious catches is an incomplete one.
This IPL has had some great catches too, but tonight we saw one more added to the collection as Kane Williamson took an incredible catch to get the dangerous wicket of Dinesh Karthik.
Karthik is someone who could do real damage but wasn’t allowed to by the Kiwi player. When Mustafizur Rahman’s slower ball wasn’t picked by the Indian wicketkeeper, he mistimed it and the ball flew towards the New Zealand captain. It was dying on him, but he managed to get his fingers under it.
Aaron Finch’s resilience
As wickets kept tumbling for the Gujarat Lions, their fans were skeptical of whether their team would even reach the three-figure mark. After some astute bowling, the Gujarat Lions batsmen found it really hard to score at a convincing rate.
However, in the storm, the one that was standing as an immovable mountain was Aaron Finch.
Batting in an unconventional number 5 position, he scored a well-timed half-century to get Gujarat over the 120 mark. He played 42 balls to score 51 on a track which was helpful to the bowlers for a change. He even smashed Mustafizur Rahman for a six—just goes to show the class that the man possesses.
David Warner’s early blast
Fun fact: when David Warner got out, the scorecard read 3.1 overs and David Warner played 17 balls of the 19 that were delivered up until that point.
It is one of the rarest sights you will ever see. Nonetheless, it was one to behold. David Warner commanded most of the strike and took full advantage of it as he scored a quick-fire 24 runs to get his team off to a flying start.
He later fell to Praveen Kumar, but the start he gave boosted his teammates’ morale as they now believed that there was something for the batsmen in the pitch.
Dhawan’s classy innings
And Shikhar Dhawan is back. Just when you thought that the Indian selectors have no reason to keep him in the team, he produces the goods to get his name back in the contention (if it wasn’t already).
He was going through a good patch of form but it was against Gujarat Lions that he played his best game this season.
Opening the innings with David Warner, he was the calmer of the two and built his innings slowly and steadily. He batted till the very end and scored 47 in 40 balls to make sure that his team avoided any sort of embarrassment.
