Sunrisers Hyderabad, which has made a habit of defending low totals this season, got a shot in the arm as its batsmen came to the fore to thump Delhi Daredevils by seven wickets at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad on Saturday.
Hyderabad pace spearhead Bhuvneshwar Kumar heaped praise on his teammates after the crucial win saw them go No. 1 in the points table. "The reason I say this win was important was that all this while, our bowlers had been helping us win matches. However, this match belonged to the batsmen. It is a complete team performance," he said, after the match.
Kumar admitted that the team was indeed targetting the last over of the powerplay. "We did want to target the sixth over but never had any score in mind. I am not sure if it was a calculated assault to score 27 runs off Avesh," he said.
The pacer said his team was confident of stopping the rampaging Delhi Daredevils batsmen - Prithvi Shaw and Shreyas Iyer - after the strategic timeout. "We pulled up things very well. It was something we had done earlier. We knew that even after scoring 90 or 95 runs in 10 overs, the match doesn't end there. We were confident as we read the wicket well. Taking wickets was important and once we did that, we were confident that we can pull things back and that's exactly what happened," Bhuvneshwar explained.
Dropped catches cost Delhi
Delhi Daredevils' assistant coach Pravin Amre said fielding had cost his team the match. "We batted very well. Getting 60-odd runs in the powerplay was very crucial. Prithvi's knock gave us a good foundation. But we were 10 runs short in the end.
"We came back strongly with our bowling. We dried the boundaries for almost seven overs. But the saying 'Catches win matches' was proved right again. Dropping (Alex) Hales and (Yusuf) Pathan on 7 and 0 respectively was the turning point. It was a disappointing performance in the field. We lost because of our fielding," he said.
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