Sunrisers Hyderabad pick up first win of the season, beat Punjab Kings by eight wickets in IPL
UPDATE – Sunday, 04/09/23 11:54pm
PTI photo
Hyderabad: Sunrisers Hyderabad put in a clinical performance to beat the Punjab Kings by a convincing eight wickets and open their account in the Indian Premier League here on Sunday.
With SRH chasing 144 behind spinner Mayank Markande’s (4/15) possession, Rahul Tripathi helped his side finish 17.1 with an unbeaten 48-ball 74. Captain Aiden Markram was still not out with 37 off 21 balls, and their efforts to ensure Shikhar Dhawan’s 66-ball 99-off allowed the Punjab Kings nine balls to 143, but in vain.
Markande completed the star turn with 4-for-15 shooting to give the Punjab Kings 9-for-88 in the 15th over. Dhawan hit 12 fours and five sixes. When it was their turn to bat, SRH got off to a slow start and were 34-1 at the end of six strong overs. After being hit by Tripathi for six, leg spinner Rahul Chahar came back in the ninth to grab Mayank Agarwal’s big wicket for 21 for 20 balls.
Tripathi then struck out Chahal twice in a row to help SRH over 50, before hitting left-arm spinner Harpreet Brar in the trot for three boundaries to keep his team in the game. On a pitch where almost all the batsmen struggled, except Shikhar Dhawan, Tripathi managed to shine and improve his half century in 35 balls, six of which came from Mohit Rathee.
It was followed by the duo of Tripathi and skipper Aiden Markram who put up a fifty-run partnership at the start of the 14th over, with SRH needing 49 runs off 42 balls. Tripathi and Markram then nearly solved their team’s problems by batting Rathee for 21, reducing the equation to 26 in the final five.
Earlier, even as the Punjab Kings lost wickets on a regular basis, Dhawan showed his team-mates how to do it with his incredible batting. Asked to bat first, the Punjab Kings suffered a disastrous start as they lost Prabhsimran Singh on the first ball of the match, as he was caught in the wicket by Indian veteran Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
The ball hit his knee, but Prabhsimran decided to walk back without asking for a review, leaving the Punjab with nothing. Skipper Shikhar Dhawan batted Bhuvneshwar towards the third man for a first-inning boundary.
However, Dhawan again started from the non-forward end when Matthew Short (1) was sent off for the second time in his second match at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium by South Africa’s left-arm pacer Marco Jansen. watch. The ball lands at a good length and swings inward before hitting Short’s pad. Unlike Prabhsimran, Short consulted his captain before deciding to return to the dugout, which left the Punjab Kings 10-2 down in the second game.
On the next ball, another swinging delivery hit the pad of wicketkeeper and batsman Jitesh Sharma (4), and Jansen’s shout for lbw was backed up by the umpire. The DRS was taken quickly and ball-tracking technology showed it was going well on the leg side, leading to the decision being overturned and to the relief of PBKS. Dhawan found two fours off his India teammate Bhuvneshwar before Jansen returned to send back Jitesh Sharma who failed to clear SRH skipper Aiden Markram in midfield.
Sam Curran struck six and four off Jansen’s consecutive bowls but after 22 off 15 balls, the English all-rounder was hit by leg spinner Markande, who after a good start by SRH’s sewing machine Ended the game with a fine finish. But Dhawan had other ideas as he beat the SRH bowlers to give his team a respectable total. Bhuvneshwar helped Dhawan all the way, and he missed three chances for the batsman, two of which were bowled by himself.
