Sunrisers Hyderabad, led by Ishan Kishan, are not too happy with how the match against Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) concluded on Sunday afternoon at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad. The Rishabh Pant-led side registered a five-wicket win after chasing down the target of 157 with one ball to spare and five wickets in hand. The LSG pacer Avesh Khan is at the centre of the controversy, and the incident happened when the final boundary was scored by Pant off the bowling of Jaydev Unadkat.
Once Pant hit the boundary off the penultimate ball of the match to seal the game for Lucknow, Avesh, who was standing near the LSG dugout, struck the ball back into the ground with his bat. According to Cricbuzz, it is being claimed that the ball had not touched the boundary cushion. Social media has also added fuel to the fire, with netizens saying Sunrisers should have been awarded five penalty runs and that Laws 20.1 (Dead Ball) and 41 (Unfair Play) should be applied.
It was indeed amateurish of Avesh Khan to touch the ball before it crossed the boundary, but there is no way that the officials can deem it to be a deliberate interruption to a fielder’s attempt to stop the four, as there were no fielders around, and hence, unfair play laws cannot be applied.
According to Cricbuzz, Sunrisers might also write to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) over the flashpoint and also a couple of other instances.
Previous instances
The same report claimed that the franchise is unhappy with the way Heinrich Klaasen was given out when he was caught by RCB’s Phil Salt off Romario Shepherd’s bowling in the IPL 2026 opener. Another incident is how opening batter Abhishek Sharma was given the marching orders against the Kolkata Knight Riders on April 2.
Concerns have been raised over Varun Chakravarthy’s catch off Blessing Muzarabani at deep square leg. Abhishek had also expressed dissent over his dismissal and was penalised for breaching IPL’s Code of Conduct.
Neither of the dismissals nor the results will be overtuned, but SRH are set to knock on the doors of the BCCI if they haven’t already.
The Sunrisers have so far won one match and lost two in the ongoing IPL 2026 season. The team lost to RCB and LSG but beat KKR. The team will next face the Punjab Kings on Saturday, April 11.
