Hyderabad: A luckless Yuzvendra Chahal was left high and dry by his ‘butter-fingered’ colleagues as Heinrich Klaasen and Ishan Kishan lived charmed lives to guide Sunrisers Hyderabad to a challenging 235 for 4 against Punjab Kings in an IPL match Wednesday.
After Abhishek Sharma (35 off 13 balls) and Travis Head (38 off 19 balls) blasted Arshdeep Singh and Marco Jansen for another half-century partnership, Klaasen (69 off 43 balls) and Kishan (55 off 32 balls) cashed in on missed opportunities to score half-centuries that ensured a healthy defendable total for their bowling unit.
Nitish Reddy, whose all-round game has improved remarkably this season, played a nice little cameo (29 not out off 13 balls) to beef up the total.
There was nothing in the track for the bowlers, and Chahal’s 1 for 32 is worth its weight in gold considering that Shashank Singh dropped a sitter and Prabhsimran Singh couldn’t effect a regular stumping, leaving him angry and distraught at the same time.
Punjab Kings, whose outfielding through the tourney has been atrocious to say the least, dropped three catches, which is unpardonable when the pitch resembles a shirtfront.
In all, SRH batters smashed 17 sixes, with Abhishek opening the floodgates with four maximums. Head hit three while Kishan and the peerless Klaasen, in the midst of his best-ever IPL season, struck four sixes each.
Jansen (0/61) and Arshdeep (1/43) gave away 100 runs collectively in their eight overs.
Kishan’s fifty was a scratchy one but very useful, and he showed glimpses of his original self with three consecutive sixes off Vijaykumar Vyshak.
At the outset, Abhishek got one in the arc from Jansen and sent it soaring over long-off, and another clean bat swing got him a maximum over long on. The second one was a knuckleball, which he read from the hand as a change of pace didn’t work.
Having executed the swivel pull off Lockie Ferguson behind square to bring up the team’s 50, Abhishek went for a fifth six, but this time the ball ballooned for Shreyas Iyer to complete the catch at short mid-off.
Once Abhishek was gone, it was Head who took charge, and two flat sixes over mid-wicket were class acts before he failed to score his third consecutive fifty, going for one shot too many.
