IPL 2017 | Sunrisers book playoff spot with dominating win over Gujarat

05/13/2017

David Warner (65) and Vijay Shankar (63) rescued Sunrisers Hyderabad from a precarious position of 25/2, chasing 155, to beat Gujarat Lions by eight wickets and secure a playoff berth. Earlier, the SRH bowlers had restricted the Lions to 154 after the latter were 105/0 in 10 overs.

Brief Scores: Gujarat Lions 154/10 (Ishan Kishan 61, Dwayne Smith 54; Mohammed Siraj 4/32, Rashid Khan 3/34) lost to Sunrisers Hyderabad 158/2 (David Warner 65*, Vijay Shankar 63*; Praveen Kumar 2/22) by 8 wickets.

In the match, which would guarantee them a playoff spot, Sunrisers Hyderabad’s day started on a good note as after winning the toss, skipper David Warner decided that he would chase in the all-important game. However, it wasn’t all good news for the defending Champions at the toss with Yuvraj Singh failing to recover from the finger injury and was replaced by Deepak Hooda. With nothing but pride to play for, Gujarat made two changes to the team with Praveen Kumar and Munaf Patel being picked over Basil Thampi and Dhawal Kulkarni.

Kishan and Bravo put Gujarat in complete control

After Delhi decided to ruin Pune’s party yesterday, Gujarat appeared to be in the same mood as well with both Ishan Kishan and Dwayne Smith getting a boundary in the very first over of the game. With the scoreboard reflecting a score of 33/0 after three overs, Warner brought spinner Mohammed Nabi to stem the run flow. Even though Mohammad Nabi gave away just two runs in his first over, he leaked 13 in the next as Gujarat raced to 61 runs in the powerplay overs. SRH fans had to wait till the ninth over to get a glimpse of Rashid Khan but the Afghan leggie struggled to impose himself on the game as the Gujarat duo took 17 runs off his over. Kishan became the third youngest half centurion in IPL history with Gujarat looking comfortable at 105/0 after the first 10 overs of the game.

Rashid and Siraj destroy Gujarat batting order

Just when it appeared Gujarat had found their groove, adversity came knocking and the home side suffered a spectacular batting collapse in the second half of their innings. It all began when Smith failed to execute a sweep and was trapped plumb in front of his stumps on a Rashid Khan delivery. The 13th and 14th overs proved to be the turning point in the game as Kishan, Suresh Raina, Dinesh Karthik, and Aaron Finch were dismissed only in a span of eight balls to leave the Lions reeling at 123/5. Ravindra Jadeja and James Faulkner tried to resurrect the innings by rotating the strike but Siraj sent Faulkner and Pradeep Sangwan packing on back-to-back deliveries to end his stunning spell with figures of 4/32. After mustering only 12 runs in the last three overs, Gujarat ended their innings with a par total of 154.

Gujarat make early inroads

Shikhar Dhawan got the visitors off to a flyer as he followed up his first over boundary off Praveen Kumar with three in a row against Pradeep Sangwan. However, Praveen Kumar led the Gujarat fight back by dismissing both Dhawan and Moises Henriques in the same over to restrict the Sunrisers to 25/2 after three overs. A couple of slow overs followed, but Warner and Vijay Shankar mustered 14 runs off the last over in the powerplay to take the team to a respectable score of 47/2. But with the field spreading out, the duo found it difficult to clear the boundaries and were only able to add 11 runs over the next two overs. But once the duo got used to the pace of the wicket, it became easier to score and at the midway point, SRH had already amassed 82 runs.

Warner and Shankar see the game through

Knowing that they needed a shade over seven runs an over in the last 10 overs, the Hyderabad batsmen started rotating the strike well and began putting away the bad deliveries. Warner and Shankar went after Ankit Soni as the former got a boundary and the latter followed it up with a couple more to bring the required run rate under seven. From there on it was only a matter of time as both the players brought up their respective half-centuries and took the required run rate to just 5 with still four overs to go. With a boundary off the very first ball of the 19th over, Warner not only ended Gujarat’s nightmarish season but also secured a place for his side in the playoffs of the tournament.