IPL 2021 | SRH vs PBKS: Hits & Flops as Kings survive another day, push Sunrisers to the brink

The game between the Punjab Kings and the Sunrisers Hyderabad turned out to be a contest of who will commit the least number of mistakes and who will play more focussed and attritional cricket both with the bat and the ball to scramble over the line.

First, the Kings struggled to time the ball at the top of the order and their middle order could only huff and puff to just about get past the 120-run mark. It was followed by a grave crisis in the Sunrisers batting camp, who could not present challenge the Kings if not for an all-round brilliance from Jason Holder.

Here, we’ll analyse the best and the worst performances of the night that in the end, turned the tide in the favour of the Kings.

Hits

Jason Holder

The pitch at Sharjah has been remarkably different from the ones that were used in the last season and teams have now realised that the best time to bat is when the ball is hard and new. 

Accepting the new reality, KL Rahul decided to shed his “anchoring” approach and decided to throw his weight from the third over itself. He was trying to get on top of Jason Holder, who was staying true to his reputation, being able to generate extra bounce off a tricky surface.

First, he got the Kings’ skipper when he was looking to send him over the midwicket fence and to add the cherry on top, he dismissed an over-ambitious Mayank Agarwal in the same over to take the Kings to some unfamiliar territory arising due to twin failures at the top.

With two wickets down and the fielding restriction on the verge of ending, Holder put a massive brake on King’s batting innings and by the time he came back to bowl the men in red were looking out of sorts.

He added on to their misery by removing Deepak Hooda who was threatening to tee off and spoil Sunriers’ party. His four-over spell read 19 runs three wickets and the Kings were restricted to mere 125 runs from their quota of 20 overs.

If the Sunrisers bowling attack has not lived up to the expectations, the batting lineup has barely arrived this season. The slump of David Warner is prolonged and the skipper Kane Williamson had an off day. Their wicket followed by the collapse of the middle order meant that Holder was needed one more time for the men in orange and he did not disappoint on that front either.

When he walked out to bat, the Sunrisers had a steep task of scoring 66 runs from the last 42 balls and by the time game finished he had reduced the gap to just six needing the final ball to take the game to the super over.

Scoring boundaries were tough on that pitch at the deliveries were holding up in the surface and timing the ball was a tough ask. Hence, Holder relied on his long handle and broad shoulder to hit five sixes in 29-ball 47 that carried the Sunriers’ hope till the last ball of the game.

It took the brilliance of Nathan Ellis to deny him the winning opportunity and although he walked back dejected having been unable to hit the last ball for six, he did more than enough to deserve respect and consistency in selection from the Sunrisers side.

Mohammed Shami

If the Kings had to defend a mediocre total of 125 runs, they had to have a great start with the ball and Rahul continued to trust Mohammed Shami’s ability with the new ball to deliver. This time, the pacer did not disappoint after an average outing against the Rajasthan Royals and dismissed two big fish in Warner and Williamson to stop the Sunriers from thinking of attacking the Kings out of the game. 

Apart from the two big wickets, he did not let the Sunrisers go for glory shots against the new ball which has been the go-to mantra for sides at Sharjah in this edition of the IPL. He was in the channel at a perfect length that never allowed the Sunrisers to send the balls beyond the boundary line. He ended up conceding only 14 runs from his quota of 24 balls and after having broken their back with the wickets of Warner and Williamson, Shami had inflicted more than enough damage his skipper would have asked of him.

Shami has been included in India’s squad for the T20 World Cup and the Indian team management would be watching his exploit in the IPL 2021 with great delight and anticipation of what he would bring to the table in the big global event.

Ravi Bishnoi

Ravi Bishnoi’s exclusion from the last game attracted widespread criticism for the Punjab Kings as fans and watchers of the game blamed the think tank for overlooking his success over the reliability and experience of Adil Rashid.

Although the debate between who is better among the two is highly stacked in the favour of the English leg spinner, the Kings had to go back to his trusted wrist-spinner as Rashid struggled with landing problems and provided a lot of short flight or too long a flight with his deliveries.

Bishnoi is a peculiar leg spinner who bowls more googly than the leg spinner—stock ball for a wrist spinner, and two of the three wickets he picked came from his weapon of choice. He first flummoxed Manish Pandey into playing his googly from the crease and followed it up with a sharp turning googly that beat Kedar Jadhav while he was trying to play a late cut. His third wicket of Abdul Samad that came in the same over of Jadhav’s dismissal came on a classical leg-spinning delivery that the right-hander tried to tonk over the leg side fence.

Yes, the pitch was turning and the Sunrisers batting order was terribly out of form, but Bishnoi possesses remarkable accuracy for a leg spinner—a quality his international peer Rashid had struggled in the previous game.

Flops

Manish Pandey

Manish Pandey first burst onto the scene in the 2009 edition of the Indian Premier League on the back of his stellar footwork against spinners and audacity against the pacers.

However, all of those qualities appear to be in retreat for Pandey, who has looked like a pale shadow of the batsman he once was and all of that was on display on a tricky surface at Sharjah.

The pitch was tough to get perfect timing but Shami was all over him with the new ball when it was supposed to be an easy phase to score runs. Later, he was castled by Bishnoi in a manner that will leave him to look like an overseas batsman who has never batted on a search gripping surface against high-quality spin bowling. 

He was found in a no-man’s land against the googly of Bishnoi that rocked his stumps after getting through the gap between the line of the ball and his bat. The amount of gap that he had left was symbolic of the gap between the promise he brought to the SRH’s table and the performance he has delivered over a four-year-long stay at the franchise.

David Warner

David Warner is a bonafide IPL legend and the number of runs he has piled on in the tournament speaks volumes of his success as a batsman and the rise of the Sunrisers’ under his watch defined his legacy as a captain.

However, the ban he served after the Newlands Test saga broke the momentum of both his batting and captaincy and life has not been the same for both the Sunrisers and himself. 

He amassed 528, 562, 848, 641, 692, 548 runs in the last six seasons of the IPL at a decent clip before the ongoing abysmal season where he has hardly looked like the batsman Warner is known for. 

On the night against the Kings, the Sunrisers needed everything that Warner’s career is built on— seizing momentum after a rapid start against the new ball, but the script has changed for the left-hander this season. He was late on a short and wide ball from Mohammed Shami and could only edge to the keeper to have a long walk back to the pavilion.

When the time doesn’t go with you, you get caught in all sorts of winds blowing across you. Warner has been known for his swift fielding ad reliable catching but even that aspect of his game fell awry against the Kings. He dropped a simplest of the simple chance off Aiden Markram and the wry smile on his face after dropping the chance summed how the time has been going for Warner.

With the win, the Kings have kept their hopes of reaching into the final four alive while the Sunriers have been cornered further down on the points table and even wins in all remaining games will not ensure their confirmed advancement to the next stage.