IPL 2021 | SRH vs RCB: Hits and Flops as Royal Challengers outshine Sunrisers in battle of endurance

The Royal Challengers Bangalore won the contest against the Sunrisers Hyderabad by six runs and made two in two wins this season. 

Defending a total of 150 runs— a kind of score that the chasing teams have found it tough to get as balls start gripping in the surface, Royal Challengers stuck to the task and tightened the noose around the Sunrisers batting to bring out a collapse of the middle order.

Glenn Maxwell emerged as the crisis man for the Royal Challengers with his first fifty in the tournament since the 2016 edition. While defending, the all-rounder Shahbaz Ahmed, who struck as many as three wickets in one over to break the backbone of the Sunrisers was the new hero for the men in red and gold.

For the Sunrisers, there were usual heroes in the form of captain David Warner and Rashid Khan while the contribution from the likes of Manish Pandey, Vijay Shankar left a lot to be desired.

Here, we shall decipher the best and the worst performances that swung the game in the favour or against their teams.

Hits

Glenn Maxwell

The 14th edition of the IPL is very young now but Glenn Maxwell looks like a man on the mission to silence all his critics with each passing game. From a 10 core cheerleader to questions on his seriousness and or lack of it in the IPL, Maxwell has dealt all of that from some of the big names in Indian cricket.

The Royal Challenger management muted all those noises and picked him up in the auction with passionate bidding. Two games into the tournament, Maxwell is building it up on the trust shown by the leadership group that includes Virat Kohli.

Maxwell walked out to bat just after the end of the powerplay and had an able partner in Virat Kohli at the other end. He opened his account with a delightful chip shot over cover for four off Rashid Khan and the form he was in the last game was showing its signs. 

The duo started putting balls into gaps, except for an over of Shahbaz Nadeem where both he and Kohli went berserk and plundered 22 runs, and stitched a 44-run partnership in six overs as the surface started playing tricks. 

Then, Maxwell saw wickets falling in clusters and the RCB went from 91/2 to 109/6 in a span of 28 balls that saw the departure of Kohli, the star of the last game— AB de Villiers, Washington Sundar and also Daniel Christian.

He was supported well by Kyle Jamieson but Maxwell was the main glue that performed the dual role of an anchor and an aggressor with such ease in interoperability. 

With only 110 runs in 17 overs, he had to make sure that the RCB reached a par total around the 150-run mark. Jamieson started the onslaught against Bhuveshwar Kumar in the next over and Maxwell too chipped in to make it an 18-run over.

The next over from T Natarajan were to be only Maxwell’s chance of limelight as he dispatched the left arm for two boundaries to put the RCB in the sight of defendable total and himself on the brink of his maiden fifty in a long long time in IPL.

He was dismissed at the last ball of the innings but the last over from Holder yielded enough runs for the RCB to have run on the board to fight hard with the ball.

Shahbaz Ahmed

Shahbaz Ahmed was picked up by the RCB in the IPL auction last year for his all-around abilities. He was one of the main reasons behind Bengal’s excellent showing in the Ranji Trophy for the 2019-20 season.

His participation in the first game of the season was limited to just one over in bowling and few balls in batting. Hence, he could well have been the casualty from the playing XI for the returning Devdutt Padikkal. However, Virat Kohli persisted with him for the left-arm spinning option he brings to the table.

Kohli’s move was ratified by the all-rounder when he brought as many as three wickets in the 17th over of the Sunrisers’ chasing efforts of 150 runs. 

First of his victim was Jonny Bairstow— the only batsman for the men in orange, who had batted with some control in their last game on a similar pitch. Bairstow’s go-to shot against the spinners turning the ball away from him has been the slog sweep, but Shahbaz ripped the ball off the surface and the top edge by a very decisive de Villiers with the gloves in his hands.

He ended another sluggish innings from Manish Pandey when the right-hander wandered out of the crease hoping against the hope to get out of a hopeless situation he found himself in. Shahbaz saw Pandey coming down the track and pulled both the length and pace of the ball back to induce a leading edge and the RCB smelled a sniff in the contest.

Abdul Samad is one of the highly-talked of player in the Sunrisers Hyderabad line up and the management received a lot of flack for not batting him higher up the order. The management wanted to be correct on that front but Samad was not ready to take the challenge, or it was not to be his day.

After tucking him on the first two balls, Shahbaz pushed one sliding into him and Samad tried to take him downtown to break free. Instead, another leading edge was found and Shahbaz was not ready to share the success with anyone and pouched a high-ball to send the Sunrisers camp into disbelief.

Shahbaz Ahmed bowled only one more over than in the first game, but the three-wicket over changed the whole course of the game. Kohli should be commended for showing faith in his abilities and when he too should pat his back while looking back at the game against the Sunrisers.

Mohammed Siraj

The last time these two sides had met was in the Eliminator of the last edition and like in this contest, the Sunrisers were chasing with Mohammed Siraj as the new ball bowler from the RCB.

Then, after taking an early wicket, and a barrage of sledging from Virat Kohli to Manish Pandey, Siraj lost all the momentum with a short ball that released all the mounting pressure.

That version of Siraj is no more as the pacer has transformed himself big time if the shreds of evidence from the two games this season are enough to form a narrative about him. It appears that he has understood that the flow of a T20 games does not allow bowlers to settle into a rhythm and hence it is imperative to be at it every ball instead of trying to set up batsmen like in the longer formats.

He was on a roll from the very first ball and started with an effort to swing the ball before coming to hard length. He was all over Wriddhiman Saha and almost got him on the last ball of the over with a big booming seaming delivery that would have made Glenn McGrath proud. He was not be disappointed for long though and came back to send back Saha in his next over.

The batsman who had pulled him from the front foot in the last game between the sides was the man at the number three. Siraj was at top of his game and was clocking the speed gun to 144 kmph with help from the pitch. There were no let-up deliveries and Siraj choked the Sunrises top order in the first half of his spell.

Kohli pulled him away from bowling and brought him back again in the last over of the powerplay. David Warner was up to it and dispatched him for a couple of fours, but the bowling figure reading 3-1-14-1 wicket was quite impressive on a pitch where the pace wasn’t to be the best weapon for his skipper.

By the time he returned for his last over of the night, the game was almost set and matched. The Sunrisers needed 27 from the last 12 balls that included six balls of him and after conceding a six to Jason Holder, he put the final nail in the Sunrisers’ coffin with the wicket of the Caribbean all-rounder.

Flops

Manish Pandey

In the two games of this edition of the IPL, Manish Pandey has batted like a batsman who does not understand his won game, and neither does he know the role he has to perform for the best of his team.

The pitches at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai have been demanding for the sides batting second and unlucky for both Sunrisers and him, he has batted in precarious situations.

In the last game, he batted without any intent and allowed the Kolkata Knight Riders to dictate terms. In the end, it was too much to do in the end overs and he had lost all rhythm and energy to bail his side of the trouble.

In the game against the RCB, he was going in a similar tempo as in the last innings which definitely did not help his patterns such as David Warner and Jonny Bairstow.

However, having seen Bairstow getting dismissed trying to force the issue against the left-arm spin of Shahbaz Ahmed, Pandey did the criminal act of walking out of the crease and attempting to hit over the top without getting anywhere near the ball. He was batting on a run a ball 38 and should have got the measure of the surface which was holding off the balls. Also, Shahbaz was giving his deliveries a serious rip to extract the best out of the pitch and the shot was not on at all, let alone on the very next ball after Bairstow’s dismissal.

He needed to attack some bowlers at some point in time, but Shahbaz was not that bowler on the night, and that too at the phase of the game.

The Sunrisers management will not give up on him with just two failures, but the time is running away for Pandey as almost every game this season is likely to serve as an audition for players looking to get a place or consolidate their place in the Indian team for the World T20 scheduled for later this year. 

Wriddhiman Saha

Wriddhiman Saha has been defying all his critics in his IPL career albeit his chances have come scattered across various seasons. However, the season is not going well for the wicketkeeper batsman from Bengal and the Sunrisers might as well be compelled to go for other enterprising players sitting on the benches. 

After a horrendous outing with the bat against the Knight Riders, Saha was trusted to bat at the top of the order once again. However, the move did not pay off as he was all at sea against an aggressive spell from Siraj with the new ball. 

He was dismissed in the third over by Siraj but all the eight balls he faced before actually getting dismissed, he was out mentally many times by the seam movement and accuracy of Siraj.

Warner could well opt for Bairstow behind the wicket and bring a highly-talented Abhishek Sharma to bolster both the batting and bowling department and create an option such as the Shahbaz Ahmad has become for the RCB.

Virat Kohli would be elated at the RCB showing character to win games from tough situations. He would not have asked for any better outing from the bowlers, but his own performances with the bat ha snot matched up to the expectations his standard carries with itself.

On the other hand, David Warner would be frustrated at letting another game they should have won slip out of their hands. The Sunrisers need to fix roles to players and ask them to play as per the team demands of them if they want to fix their journey and move towards the playoffs.