Sunrisers Hyderabad 201 for 3 (Nitish Kumar Reddy 76*, Head 58, Avesh 2-39) beat Rajasthan Royals 200 for 7 (Parag 77, Jaiswal 67) by one run
This was SRH’s fifth score of 200 or more this IPL, but they took the scenic route to get there after choosing to bat. By all accounts, it was a decision informed by their ordinary chasing record and not the conditions. They found themselves having to start off on a sluggish track, which got better as the evening wore off. In fact they themselves scored 153 in their last 12 overs. For the 18 overs of the RR chase, it seemed those first eight overs had cost SRH the game, who now sit among the top four on the points table.
RR spot on with the new ball
Avesh Khan and Sandeep Sharma reaped the harvest as they got Abhishek Sharma and Anmolpreet Singh with the first ball each of them bowled, resulting in the slowest powerplay for SRH this year: 37 runs.
Head leads, Reddy follows
Reddy, Klaasen close things off
Head again hit a bit of a rut after reaching his fifty, which ended with him playing on while trying to ramp a wide yorker. Not before he was reprieved again, this time by the third umpire when his bat was clearly in the air when the wicket was broken.
However, the real damage to RR came from Reddy and Heinrich Klaasen. Reddy ruined Ashwin’s neat figures by taking two sixes off his final over. Then Klaasen got stuck into Chahal in the 17th over. The RR bowlers were on point with their plans and execution, and it took improvisation and exceptional hitting from Klaasen to take SRH past 200.
Vintage Bhuvneshwar
What seemed the perfect chase
Bhuvneshwar found swing in the second over too, but it met the broad swinging bat of Parag, who hit him for two fours and a six. This was nonchalant, disdainful hitting. Jaiswal was more respectful but just as powerful. His shot at the start of the fourth over went straight into Cummins’ midriff at mid-off, but the SRH captain dropped it. Then Cummins brought himself on to be hit for two fours and monstrous six over long leg. In the next over, Abhishek Sharma dropped Parag at extra cover. It speaks to the consistency in their hitting that the highest the asking rate hovered around 10.
The chaos
Like Head, Jaiswal played on a low full toss as he tried to ramp it. Parag pulled the momentum back by hitting a six two balls later. Small things happened in the 16th over that look huge in hindsight. Parag hit a full toss from Cummins straight to short fine leg. Then he got too close to a half-volley, and holed out to long-on. SRH had a wicket and a rare over without a boundary.
Powell, though, settled RR’s nerves with 15 off the 17th, bowled by Marco Jansen. Hetmyer started the 18th with a huge six. Two dot balls later, he mis-hit a full toss and the game was refusing to die. Dhruv Jurel nailed a leg-side half-volley from Cummins straight down the throat of deep square leg following which Cummins bowled three straight dots at Powell, who hit the last ball for six to tilt the balance again.
After Ashwin handed over the strike to Powell, he used the fielding penalty to take a boundary through the vacant fine-leg region. Poor throws from the outfield allowed Powell take three couples. One more, and it would be over. Perhaps Powell was expecting something close to a yorker because Bhuvneshwar had been nailing them. The full toss took him by surprise, handing RR their first defeat this IPL while chasing.
Sidharth Monga is a senior writer at ESPNcricinfo