Head, Ahmed's carnage and bowlers help Hyderabad beat Delhi
CHENNAI: The record-breaking opening partnership between openers and some tidy bowling from the entire unit helped Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Delhi Capitals on April 20.
Rishabh Pant won the toss and invited Sunrisers to bat first at the Arun Jaitley Stadium. Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma, who put the foundation of Hyderabad's 287 against Royal Challenger Bengaluru, started where they left in the previous fixture. Head smashed a six and two fours followed by Sharma's boundary helped Hyderabad take 19 runs in the opening over. Lalit Yadav gave away 21 runs in his first over, while Anrich Nortje conceded 22 in his opening over. Even the introduction of Kuldeep Yadav did not stop the carnage and gave away 20 runs in his over as Sunriseres reached 100 in the fifth over of the match. 22 runs in the final over of the powerplay took Hyderabad to a record-breaking 125 without losing a wicket.
Yadav broke the partnership immediately after the powerplay with the wicket of Sharma and Aiden Markram in the same over. Axar Patel slowed the flow of runs and also took the wicket of South African Heinrich Klaasen immediately after Yadav sent Head back for 89 off 32 balls. From 125/0 in after six overs, Hyderabad were reduced to 158/4 after 10 overs. Nortje and Patel further slowed down the scoring rate, but Nitish Kumar Reddy and Shahbaz Ahmed soon found a rhythm to add a partnership of 50 runs. That led to Hyderabad crossing 200 for the fourth time while batting first in the season of IPL.
Yadav then came back to end the partnership between Reddy and Ahmed, but Hyderabad were already on the course of another 250+ score. Abdul Samad continued the hitting and smashed Mukesh for a four on the first ball he faced. Samad did not last long but Ahmed scored a half-century off 28 balls and took Hyderabad to 266 for seven in the first innings. For Delhi Capitals, Axar Patel was the most economical bowler with 29 runs off his four overs. Yadav on the other hand took four wickets, while giving away 55 runs off four overs.
Delhi started the chase with Prithvi Shaw hitting four back-to-back boundaries, but Washington Sundar came back stronger to send the Mumbai opener back for 16. Bhuvaneshwar Kumar sent David Warner in the next over. With the score at 25/2 after two overs, Jake Fraser-McGurk made the most of his opportunity to smash 30 runs in Washington Sundar's second over. While Abishek Porel taking 20 runs from the Hyderabad captain's opening over. The pair added 84 off 30 balls to take Delhi to 109 after seven overs.
Once Delhi lost two youngsters, Pant lost partners and finally, they were bowled out for 199 runs in the final over.
T Natarajan was the star of the show for the Sunrisers with the ball as he took four wickets and gave away 19 runs in his quota of four overs. Mayank Markande and Nitish Kumar Reddy took two wickets each.
Brief score: Sunrisers Hyderabad 266/7 in 20 overs (Travis Head 89, Shahbaz Ahmed 59; Kuldeep Yadav 4/55) beat Delhi Capitals 199 all out in 19.1 overs (Jake Fraser-McGurk 65, Rishabh Pant 44; T Natarajan 4/19)