Live Score
Cricket Teams
Cricket Players
IPL 2018: How Sunrisers Hyderabad ‘sneaked’ past Royal Challengers Bangalore
Sunrisers Hyderabad not only registered their fifth consecutive win of the IPL 2018 vs Royal Challengers Bangalore but also defended yet another low total riding on the performance of their excellent bowling unit.
Sunrisers Hyderabad had to dig deep to eke out a five run win against Royal Challengers Bangalore on Monday. Captain Kane Williamson said on tough surfaces like the one at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium here it was their fighting mentality that helped his team sneak through. (MATCH REPORT)
After SRH had given RCB a 147-run target, the chase was going well till captain Virat Kohli was at the crease. But he was dismissed on 39 by a superb one-handed catch by Yusuf Pathan off Shakib Al Hasan in the 10th over while AB de Villiers got out to Rashid Khan in the next over as RCB look doomed. (HIGHLIGHTS) (SCORECARD)
“What would’ve been great was to get heap of wickets early, that’s what you are always after. But some of these surfaces that we have played, it is difficult to do that unless batsmen come very hard at you. It was hard to bring in the slip fielders as there was little swing and the pitch was on the slower side. We wanted try and commit to a plan for as long as we could. We know when we do it on some of the varied surfaces that we have played we can build the pressure (in the middle overs) and things can happen quickly,” Williamson said after the match.
“Our bowling attack has been outstanding and so is the fielding. But today we weren’t at our best in either. But we saw signs of brilliance from both parts which made the difference in just sneaking across the line. Sometimes, it’s the nature of the surface which dictates the fighting, scrappy mentality on them with the bat and the ball.”
READ | Kane Williamson fifty propels Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Royal Challengers Bangalore
SRH, after getting to 112/3 in 16 overs, lost the last seven wickets for 34 runs. Williamson said they are looking for improvement in the coming games.
“It was a varied surface. We were targeting about 150. We weren’t far away from that. The game ebbed and flowed. At times we were struggling a little bit. We were looking good to get a 155 to 160 run total. We got 140-odd, and we were certainly in the game at the halfway point. Then with the ball it was similar, we took wickets, stemmed flow of runs but they built little partnerships. We did feel that if we were at our usual standard, we could have operated better on the field. That is something we would want to do in the next game. At the end of the day, it was good to fight hard and get the win,” he said.
Williamson also defended his middle order batsmen. Apart from himself and Shakib Al Hasan, the lower order fell to ambitious shots, but the Kiwi batsman was reading too much into it.
READ | Changing trend: Leg-spin overshadows off-spin at IPL 2018
“It’s really important that as batters we go out and play with freedom. We have been playing on surfaces where it’s very difficult to do that especially coming towards the end and do it from ball one. It’s really important to play smart cricket and at the same time get as many runs as you can. We were targeting about 150, we were just five runs off it,” Williamson said.
Williamson-led SRH next face Delhi Daredevils in an away match on Thursday.
