What a thumping. This year’s IPL has seen some very one-sided affairs, but this one beats all of them by a country mile. Gujarat, one of the two new teams of this year’s IPL, came into this game with 3 wins from 3 games.
Meanwhile, the Sunrisers Hyderabad had lost their first 2 games before winning their 3rd encounter. As a result, both teams came into this game with a win behind their backs and hoped to extend their run.
The Gujarat Lions were expected to win given their better form and that they were playing at home, but what happened today was an onslaught against the newest addition of this year’s IPL.
After some solid bowling from the Hyderabad franchise, Gujarat could post only 135 runs on the board. The target was an easy chase for the Sunrisers, as they hunted it down with all their wickets intact.
And here are the 5 memorable moments from the game that don't fade away, quite like the Axe Signature range of body perfumes:
Aaron Finch's wicket
Aaron Finch is a man in form. In each of his first 3 games, he scored half-centuries to reiterate his dominance among openers.
As he came on the pitch to open the innings, almost everyone expected another Finch classic. Indeed, fans were all hyped up to see how the battle between him and the young Bangladeshi Mustafizur Rahman would go.
However, all those expectations went in vain after just 4 balls.
After being unable to score from the first 3 balls, he was cleaned up by Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the 4th ball of the game. Finch was gone—and that too without troubling the scorecard keepers.
Suresh Raina’s blast
It has been a quite a while since we have seen a Raina classic. Playing for India never gives him the chance to bat for a long time since he comes in to the fray with just 4-5 overs to go.
However, with the Gujarat Lions, he comes to bat at number 3, which gives him the opportunity to play more overs—allowing him to build a big innings.
In the first three games, he got good starts, but couldn’t convert them into big innings. Today, however, he converted his start to a big score as he hit 75 off just 51 balls, getting more than half of his team's runs. His innings was a special one as he was the only one who got a score of more than 20.
Mustafizur’s death bowling
In the IPL, if there is one bowler whose role is as clear as crystal, it is Mustafizur Rahman.
As Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Barinder Sran share the new ball among themselves, the 20-year-old from Bangladesh doesn’t get a look-in until the death overs. It just signals to one thing: he is in the team as a death-over specialist.
And David Warner has done a great job so far in providing him overs in the end.
Today was no different as he gave away only 19 runs in his 4 overs—of which 8 came in the 2 death overs that he bowled.
His exceptional bowling gave the perfect platform for...
Bhuvi’s magic last over
Bhuvneshwar Kumar has made a good come back. In his first game of the season, he was smacked all over the park by a young Sarfaraz Khan. It was an atrocious spell that must have dented his confidence evidently.
However, all that seems to be a thing of the past—and his bowling figures of 4/29 in 4 overs shows just that.
The best part about his spell was the final over the game. In the final over, Gujarat's batsmen were desperately seeking for runs after being unable to pick many from Mustafizur’s overs.
Bhuvi, however, was up to the task as he let only 6 runs and took 3 wickets to shunt the Gujarat Lions for only 135. He was rightly awarded the man of the match award at the end.
Hyderabad openers shine
As young kids, most of us became grumpy when we didn’t get to bat. Indeed, at one point, we actually hoped that our own teammate lost his wicket so that we got the chance to whack the ball.
The SRH middle-order must have felt the exact same way today.
Keeping the tongue-in-cheek rhetoric aside, David Warner and Shikhar Dhawan showed fine temperament to chase down the target. The latter has been on the look out for some form but made a solid comeback today while the former continued his superior run by becoming the orange cap holder by the end of the game.
Warner scored 74 in just 48 while Dhawan played his way to 53 in 41 balls. The duo helped Hyderabad become the first team this season to win with 10 wickets remaining.
