All Sunrisers can do now is wait and see, says Guptill

Losing close games is one of the areas that needs to be worked upon according to Sunrisers Hyderabad's batsman Martin Guptill.

"From the start we had, we should have definitely scored more, so it’s frustrating," Martin Guptill said, after the defeat to RCB.

Sunrisers Hyderabad needed to secure just one win from its last two clashes to secure a spot in the playoffs and didn’t have to worry about the margin of victory; it was comfortably ahead in the net run-rate race. But at the end of its league stage commitments, the Hyderabad outfit now needs to hope for Kolkata Knight Riders to lose against Mumbai Indians to qualify for the playoff.

"We have played some really good cricket in patches and there have been patches in other games where we quite haven’t been on par. Unfortunately for us, that has left us now relying on other results now.  There are a couple of close games where we should have won earlier in the tournament that we could look back on and say what if. We can’t change that now and all we can do is wait and see what happens tomorrow night," Martin Guptill said, after the team’s four-wicket loss to Royal Challengers Bangalore at M. Chinnaswamy stadium on Saturday.

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Martin Guptill, who has played in only the last two games for the Sunrisers to fill in the slot left vacant by David Warner, scored 30 runs at the top. The team struggled with its batting after the loss of his wicket. Only skipper Kane Williamson gritted through for an unbeaten 70 runs to give Sunrisers put up a challenging total of 175/7, thanks largely to the 28 runs he collected in the 20th over from Umesh Yadav.

 

"I don’t think we were as good as we can be with the bat. We got off to a great start and then lost two or three quick wickets in six overs and that really halted our momentum. It was tough to rebuild the innings from there and we were lucky that Kane (Williamson) scored through and had a big over in the end to get us to a total that we thought could defend," Guptill said, reflecting on the team’s performance.

He admitted that the team was "definitely under par" on Saturday. "From the start we had, we should have definitely scored more, so it’s frustrating. But at the end of the day, we kept ourselves in the game. In the last over, 28 runs came from it and that gave us some momentum and the way our opening bowlers bowled up front, it gave us a lot of momentum to go and get the job done. But that big partnership (144-run partnership between Shimron Hetmyer and Gurkeerat Mann) really took it away from us," he said.

Guptill also defended Rashid Khan who went for 44 runs in his four overs against the Royal Challengers. Both Shimron Hetmyer and Gurkeerat Mann took particular liking to his bowling and tore him apart with big hits.

"You are not going to bowl wicket balls every ball. It is T20 cricket and there are going to be times where we are going to go over 10 runs an hour. Unfortunately for Rashid, it was tonight for him. Look, he has bowled well for us during the tournament. While he hasn’t picked up as many wickets as he probably would have liked, he has actually still gone mostly under 7 runs an over. It is cricket, it’s going to happen time to time," he said.