Well it was an eliminator match between the Sunrisers Hyderabad and the Delhi Capitals. Both the teams have been absolutely brilliant this IPL season. As David Warner and Johnny Bairstow flew away to play for their country, Sunrisers Hyderabad actually lost their batting line up. The pitch was very difficult to assess at the Vizag. Shreyas Iyer won the toss and elected to bowl first.
Having asked to bat first, Wriddhiman Saha and Guptill opened the innings for the Sunrisers Hyderabad. Martin Guptil looked great at the start of the innings and he started middling from the willow right from the first ball. Saha got out cheaply considering only 8 runs. Rest of the middle order batsman contributed 20-25 runs respectively helping the team total reach 160+ run mark. Kemo Paul was amazing with this ball, he started hitting the deck hard. Paul’s slower ones made SRH batters to struggle big time. 162 runs on the board were not enough I believe considering the conditions and the pitch. 30 more runs would have been a challenging task for the Delhi capitals.
Prithvi Shaw and Shikhar Dhawan were off to a great start. Shaw started playing classic drives during the batting powerplay and Dhawan threw his wicket on a wide delivery! His wicket costed Delhi capitals as the Duo were going really great and were complimenting each other well. Captain Shreyas Iyer edged in Khaleel Ahmed’s bowling and departed early scoring only 8 runs of 11 balls. Young wicket-keeper batsman, Rishab Pant played a beauty of an innings. Even thought he played a beauty of an innings, he is still immature to be an international cricketer. Yet being there for so long, he got out cheaply by playing one handed lofted shot over the long-off. He still needs to rectify things and play some quality first class cricket to gain some experience. This is one of the main reasons that he has not been qualified for the World Cup 2019. Kemo Paul finished things off in style. DC will be meeting Chennai super kings this Friday.
