Hello and a warm welcome to yet another blog on the daily match reviews on this year’s IPL. Here I will cover the crazy game between Sunrisers Hyderabad and the Lucknow Super Giants at Uppal. So let’s get started!
KL Rahul won the toss and opted to field first, the main strategy being to put pressure on the SRH openers when they chase. But this tactic proved to be a huge failure as Bhuvi bowled an amazing spell and it looked like he was at his prime best, reducing LSG to 27 runs in the powerplay and KL’s wicket just worsened their batting. But a useful knock by Badoni, supported by Pooran gave the Super Giants a “respectable” total of 165 on board. But this wasn’t the case as the SRH openers were better than their supreme best and in about an hour of play in the chase, with 10.3 overs spare, SRH won by 10 wickets, improving their NRR as well.
In an SRH demolition, LSG have to be aggressive with the bat moving forward, especially their top order and they should make sure the innings keep going even if KL or Stoinis are dismissed cheaply. Badoni played some wonderful shots to give LSG 165 and he said it was a tricky wicket and was very confident that their bowlers would defend it. His speech is down below…
And yes, there wasn’t any dew but the SRH openers, Head and Abhishek had none of it and after the first over which went for just 8 runs, almost every single ball was a boundary henceforth. The openers do give SRH a big powerplay but they soon get dismissed and their middle-order gives them the fireworks in the end. But this time it wasn’t, as Head and Abhishek plundered 107 runs in the powerplay and at this point, I thought at least one of them would be dismissed. Still, they just kept going, continuing the carnage or bombardment, giving absolutely no mercy to the LSG bowlers. They chased 166 IN JUST 9.3 OVERS AND FINISHED THE GAME BY ABOUT 10:20! This was the EA Sports version of batting, completely crazy, unreal, mad, entertaining and there will be 100s of adjectives to follow this kind of batting. I was completely left speechless by this level of batting against a very good bowling side. KL’s words best describe this game:
LSG would need some time to first mentally recover from this massive defeat and their NRR has almost been murdered due to this game, so to ideally qualify, they need to win their two games. So this game shows the reality of when a team, in this case, LSG, playing the T20 game say in 2019, where even though they had a terrible start, they recovered well and got them to 165, which in 2019 is a very good total. But the modern level of T20 cricket was shown by the SRH batters, finishing the game in 9.3 overs and the answer we get is in flat wickets, like at the Chinnaswamy, Uppal, Delhi and Eden, a team needs to score 220+ to feel a bit save. So teams need to ensure that they need to get a flying start and their middle-order converts it into a big score and that is the only way a team can win in the IPL, where generally all wickets are flat.
So that’s it for today. It was a long one because this game was absolutely ridiculous and insane, another two adjectives to describe this batting masterclass by SRH, playing EA cricket in real life. So tomorrow it is PBKS taking on RCB, and the loser will officially be eliminated from the tournament. So stay tuned for that!