Sunrisers Hyderabad 175 for 9 (Klaasen 50, Avesh 3-27, Boult 3-45) beat Rajasthan Royals 139 for 7 (Jurel 56, Shahbaz 3-23, Abhishek 2-24) by 36 runs

“There’s nothing more satisfying than hearing a big crowd go silent.” Pat Cummins, November 19, 2023. The next day he took Virat Kohli’s wicket and made a ground with 100,000 people feel like a ghost town.

It looked like Rajasthan Royals had won a crucial toss and they did the right thing by opting to chase. One square boundary was significantly shorter than the other (61m vs 72m) and asymmetry like that makes it really hard to defend totals, especially if the dew came in, but it didn’t. All of a sudden SRH had a dry ball and a dry pitch. And they worked a miracle on that.

Spin to win

Shahbaz Ahmed originally came into this game to try and shore up a stop-start batting innings. It was the second time in two playoff games that SRH had to pull the Impact Player trigger early. He made 17 in a partnership of 43 with Heinrich Klaasen to push the total up to 175. But that total looked light when Yashasvi Jaiswal raced to 41 off 19 balls. The game was slipping away. Except it had also shown SRH a way to claw back. Jaydev Unadkat’s first over – the seventh – showed signs of how much the ball was gripping. SRH had no specialist spinner in their line-up but in conditions like these you don’t need specialists. You just need people that can turn the ball and hold a line. Shahbaz did that and more, winning a match-up he was second-favourite in. Bowling into the left-hander’s hitting arc, he handed Jaiswal his first dismissal to spin since IPL 2022.

Cummins brought Abhishek Sharma, who had bowled only three overs this campaign, from the other end. He even called Aiden Markram to roll his arm over. The pitch was now taking handsome amounts of turn and Cummins used any means in his armoury to exploit it. SRH produced a 33-ball period without a single boundary using bowlers whom they haven’t really had to turn to but were there now at this crucial time. This 33-ball period also included four wickets. Shahbaz who hadn’t picked up a wicket since April 5 turned up with 4-0-23-3 tonight.

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