David Warner and Jonny Bairstow went hammer and tongs to put a dismal bowling performance behind with their brilliant batting as Sunrisers Hyderabad pulled off a five-wicket wicket win over Rajasthan Royals in an Indian Premier League (IPL) match at Rajiv Gandhi Stadium in Hyderabad on Friday.
It is not very often that a superbly-paced century like the one from Royals’ Sanju Samson went in vain as Sunrisers posted its first win in two games and Royals suffered a second straight loss.
For, the flamboyant Warner meant business straight away – flicking the first ball for a four and pulling a six off pacer Dhawal Kulkarni in the first over of the chase.
And, he was successful with his intent — to score the maximum in the power-play — as Sunrisers finished at 69 for no loss with Warner hitting eight fours and a six.
Bairstow was not far behind clearly enjoying role of second fiddle even without failing to play the big strokes.
The openers put 100 runs in just 8.5 overs was a poor reflection of the lacklustre attack as most of the bowlers were clueless before Warner provided some relief by pulling Ben Stokes straight to the fielder in the deep in 10th over.
Soon, Bairstow too perished to a brilliant catch by Kulkarni near the fence off leggie Shreyas Gopal but Vijay Shankar's ensured eased the nevers.
Shreyas Gopal’s three-wicket haul pegged Sunrisers back but Rashid Khan and Yusuf Pathan made sure SRH bagged two points.
Earlier, Rajasthan Royals opted to bat and leg-spinner Rashid Khan struck the first big blow when he cleaned up the dangerous Jos Buttler with his second ball, trying to sweep by exposing his leg-stump and incidentally it was the fourth time in four IPL innings that the Afghan bowler got rid of him.
It was a slow start with Royals scoring 35/1 in the power-play with only three fours hit. Then, 24-year-old, brilliant Samson struck his second IPL century and his 119-run stand for the second wicket of 76 balls with captain Ajinkya Rahane set the base for what was eventually a challenging score on a pitch where the bowlers had little to cheer.
Read: Sanju Samson scores first century of IPL 2019
The two demonstrated the efficacy of playing the cricketing strokes without actually slogging across the line.
Sunrisers captain Kane Williamson shuffled his bowlers around with even Rashid bowling his four-over quota in three spells!
To the dismay of home crowd, star bowler Bhuvneshwar Kumar was meted out rough treatment by Samson, who scored 24 runs in the 18th over of the innings with the sequence being — 6,4,4,2,4,4. And, the star bowler finished the most expensive of all.
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