Kolkata: Ultimately, one ball separated Lucknow Super Giants from Sunrisers Hyderabad but this wasn’t meant to be such a close affair considering Mohammed Shami had dismissed Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head within 13 balls of their innings. Approaching their first win of the season, however, LSG stuttered more than they would have liked to, but thankfully Rishabh Pant was calm and stayed put.
Aiden Markram played his part, hitting 45 off 27 to give Lucknow a steady start, after SRH had been restricted to 156/9 on a slow pitch at Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium.
But LSG couldn’t sustain the momentum against some wily bowling by Sunrisers. Markram was caught on the long-off boundary, trying to lift a wrong ‘un from Shivang Kumar. Ayush Badoni skipped down the pitch to lift left-arm spinner Harsh Dubey but got yorked and Ishan Kishan stumped him. The chase got interesting with Nicholas Pooran’s wicket after he set off without being aware where he had swept the ball. Kishan, leading SRH, collected it and ran him out.
With Ayush Badoni too gone, it was cue for Pant to take the charge of the chase. Abdul Samad hit two boundaries off Eshan Malinga in the 17th over to bring down the equation to 19 from three overs. Dubey came back to dismiss Samad before Pant released the pressure a bit with a four, which also raised his fifty.
Harshal Patel however took the match to the wire by conceding just four runs in the penultimate over, leaving Lucknow needing nine runs from six balls. Pant unlocked two fours off the first two balls from Jaydev Unadkat to get the scores level, played out two dots before lofting Unadkat over mid-off to seal the win.
The relief was visible on Pant’s face, after his 50-ball 68 not out. “You know, when you get this at the last and finish the game, it’s definitely a good plus for us,” he said at the post-match presentation. Off the field, the pressure on LSG has been telling but this win should bring them back on track.
“There is never a perfect match. You know, you’ve got to be critical as a management, but at the same time you’ve got to appreciate what’s happening inside. The only conversation is, you know, looking to, you know, execute the plan rather than feeling that I can do all this. Trust your preparation and just take on the game.”
Shami’s accuracy first up helped in this case. His figures of 4-0-9-2 was a reminder that in a format increasingly dominated by brute force, a bowler can still bend a T20 game to his will with precision and intelligence. The pitch offered little extravagance, no dramatic seam or swing, yet Shami caused flutter with his lengths. Having gone through five balls without a boundary, Abhishek chased a full delivery outside off. It was considerably slower though, and Abhishek by then had committed to the shot, only to see the ball take an edge to M Siddharth at short third man.
Next over first ball Shami accounted for Travis Head, again beating him by taking the pace off. Shami bowled a scrambled seam delivery at 121 kph. The ball pitched and angled away from the left-hander as he tried to punch it and he spooned it to Markram in front of mid-off. Sunrisers’ misery was compounded when Prince Yadav castled Kishan with an inswinger, making it 11/3. When Liam Livingstone fell to a mistimed lap shot to make it 26/4, Nitish Kumar Reddy strode out.
The circumstances were wildly different from the match against KKR where they had to consolidate a brilliant start. But Reddy (56 off 33 balls) and Heinrich Klaasen (62 off 41 balls) again put their heads together to gradually lift the team out of the shambles with a 116-run stand for the fifth wicket. Before and after it though, Sunrisers just couldn’t manufacture enough boundaries to challenge LSG with a tough target.
