IPL 2020| SRH vs KXIP: Hits and Flops of the game as Sunrisers dismantle Kings XI Punjab

The Kings XI Punjab team management will understand the lesson of building a core team and identifying the bunch of players who have to be backed for a considerable number of matches for long tournaments such as the Indian Premier League. The team has been looking for too many people to address the challenges rather than trusting players to come up with good results and as a result, the team does not know where to go and who all are to be backed in mid of the tournament. 

In contrast, the Sunrisers Hyderabad understand their nucleus and back the preferred combination to take them over the line. The difference between the strategy and the impact it can have was all evident in the match between the two sides as the duo of David Warner and Jonny Bairstow piled on the agony for the Kings XI Punjab team.

Here we rate the best and the worst performance from the game between the Sunrisers and Kings XI.

Hits

Jonny Bairstow

Bairstow was under pressure and was not looking in his usual touch of smashing balls around the park but the Sunrisers decided to put faith in his flamboyant and he was not to disappoint the team. A full toss from Mujeeb Ur Rahman got him going and the English opener did not look back on his out of touch batting. On the back of back to back boundaries in Sheldon Cottrell’s over and followed by an onslaught of Ravi Bishnoi, Bairstow powered along to a 27-ball-50.

It was his third fifty of this season of the IPL but the fact that this inning was paced with the help of sublime timings and flair, usual characteristics of Bairstow’s game will give relief to the Sunrisers camp going into the business end of the tournament after this week. Bairstow partnered with David Warner to produce a masterpiece of partnership, marching the orange army so ahead of the game that it looked beyond Kings XI Punjab’s grasp even before they started the chase.

Rashid Khan

There is hardly any game when Rashid Khan fails in a T20 game and games like these when the Sunrises dominated the Kings XI Punjab, it would have been all but obvious to find Rashid Khan bowling a superb spell to stamp victory for his team.

Rashid Khan has been a proven match-winner for the Hyderabad team and tonight when Nicholas Pooran was fighting a long and tough battle against a mounting required rate and falling wickets at the other end, it was Rashid who hit the nail in the coffin for the Kings XI, dismissing the Caribbean left-hander in his last over. Rashid ended the day with a stupendous figure of 12/3, which is beyond the point of belief for any other bowler but not Rashid.

Nicholas Pooran

Nicholas Pooran, the world knows about, has finally arrived in the Indian Premier League 2020. He was aggressive from the outset and when Warner took a punt on him, introducing left-arm spinner Abhishek Sharma, Pooran’s eyes lit up and he started going berserk from the moment he landed on the crease.

He especially got stuck into leg spinner Abdul Samad and sent him for 28 runs in his only over in the night to all corners of the ground. Pooran was looking in a dismissive touch as the balls were hitting the middle of his bat, but one of the biggest cliche in the cricket that breaks do wonder to break a batsman’s flow of batting worked against him as well and he ended up cutting a deli9very from Rashid Khan in the 15th over to point folder, ending the narrowest of chances the Kings XI Punjab had in the game.

Flops

KL Rahul

The day was a forgettable one for KL Rahul, both as a captain and the leader of the Kings XI Punjab side. Commentators raised eyebrows at his too much tinkering with the playing XI, suggestive of insecurity in the team management about the quality of players and the reservations they had turned out to be true. The KXIP had made an impressive start in the IPL but now after playing six matches in this season, languishes at the bottom of the points table and a lot of the blame has to go Rahul's way for his mismanagement of players so early in the tournament.

There is a fine line between being flexible with the team selection and tinkering too much and for now, it seems that line is too blurred for the duo KL Rahul and Anil Kumble who have not been ankle to identify the bunch of players the team should build its nucleus upon.

KL Rahul, the batsman, had a mediocre night as well as he scooped a catch to deep square leg fiddler, stationed specifically for his sweep shots against left-arm spinners. He was dismissed before he could impart any damage to the Sunrisers bowling but he also ran Mayank Agarwal out after calling him for a second run while David Warner brilliantly stopped the ball to send Agarwal back to the dugout. After Agarwal’s dismissal, Rahul could not have failed if the KXIP had to chase the total in excess of 200 but today he could not rise up to the challenges and perished for a mere 16-ball-11.

Mohammed Shami

Shami had a rare off day in the ongoing season of the IPL and the opening pair of Bairstow and Warner did not miss the opportunity to police on him from his very first over. Shami was inconsistent in his lengths and Bairstow, in particular, was very severe on anything too full bowled against him. He was hit for 40 runs off his four overs as the Kings XI Punjab struggled to break the momentum of the Sunrisers batting and could never recover from the hammerings handed out to them by the Bairstow-Warner partnership.

Slowly and steadily, the Sunrisers are coming back to close to their best in all the departments. While the opening pair clicked which has been the signature of SRH’s success over the years, the team also outplayed the KL Rahul’s Kings in the field department. They pulled out two big wickets of Mayank Agarwal and Glenn Maxwell via run outs who could have changed the fate of the game. With this game, SRH has jumped the ladder on the points table and reached the third position with three wins and three losses from the six games they have played so far this season.

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