Hyderabad: Ishan Kishan slayed a hapless Rajasthan Royals attack to conjure up a magnificent 45-ball century, powering Sunrisers Hyderabad to an imposing 286 for six in their home IPL game in Hyderabad Sunday.
In sultry Hyderabad heat, Royals’ inexperienced skipper Riyan Parag committed a blunder by opting to bowl on the flattest deck on offer in IPL.
The result was inevitable with Travis Head taking the Royals attack to cleaners with 67 off 31 balls and then Kishan blazed in an unfamiliar orange jersey with an audacious 106 not out off 47 balls to beef up the SRH total. Head and Kishan hit 20 fours and nine sixes between them.
SRH picked up from where they left the last season and could have bettered their own and IPL’s best ever total (287/3) but two wickets fell in the final over.
Jofra Archer, who went for 76 wicket-less runs in four overs recorded the worst ever individual bowling figures in the history of the tournament.
Such was the dominance of Head during the front 10 and Kishan at the back-10 that Abhishek Sharma (24 off 11 balls) and fit-again Nitish Reddy’s (30 off 15 balls) efforts were completely overshadowed.
Heinrich Klaasen (34 off 14 balls) got a tailor-made situation to clobber the clueless Royals bowlers towards the end.
Kishan, one of the core players in Mumbai Indians in the past few years, had a rough 2024 as he lost his central contract for ignoring domestic cricket for the cash-rich league and MI also didn’t retain him.
The diminutive Patna man has comeback with a renewed vigour and packed a mean punch in his ‘debut game’ for the new franchise.
Playing seven games on such a belter, Kishan will make a serious case for himself to make a comeback to national side even though T20 team bears a settled look.
The pitch had nothing for the bowlers and with little margin of error, the balls kept sailing into the stands with monotonic regularity.
Archer, Royals’ most experienced bowler looked a bit undercooked as he was sent soaring into orbit by Head, who smashed 23 off his first over. The Barbados born Englishman didn’t recover after that. If Head swivelled him off his hips for a pick-up pull-shot, Kishan muscled him over extra cover and used his pace to scoop him over keep for same result.
If Archer’s pace became his bane, Fazalhaq Farooqi (0/49 in 3 overs) and Sandeep Sharma’s (1/51 in 4 overs) lack of it was an even bigger issue.
Mystery spinner Maheesh Theekshana (2/52 in 4 overs) found out that not every ground is Chepauk and he lost his length on multiple occasions. Only Tushar Deshpande (3/44 in 4 overs) returned with some kind of a respectable stat at the end of the innings.
PTI
