IPL 2025: LSG silences Hyderabad with a strong show
Rishabh Pant's LSG won their first match of the season, chasing 191 in 16.1 overs, led by Pooran's 70 and Thakur's key wickets against SRH.
Mumbai: Rishabh Pant called the toss right and true to the etiquette that Lucknow is famous for, invited the opposition to bat first. Post that, Lucknow Super Giants showed no mercy to Sunrisers Hyderabad, beating the Orange Army at their own high tempo game. They chased down 191 in 16.1 overs to score an important away win, their first of the season.
Nicholas Pooran’s power-packed 70 (26b, 6x4, 6x6) and Mitchell Marsh’s quickfire hit-through-the-line innings of 52 (31b, 7x4, 2x6) silenced the Hyderabad crowd that had come out in support of the Pat Cummins-led side.
Boundary riders don’t matter to them. The uber-aggressive SRH would still come out swinging, we knew. That is why it came as no surprise when Abhishek Sharma tried to clear deep square leg when Shardul Thakur dug one in short. Only this time, one half of SRH’s dynamic left-handed opening partnership couldn’t find distance and picked out one of the only two fielders in the deep.
Thakur got LSG the lucky break. The India all-rounder comes to the cricket field with all the overworked labels – man with the golden arm, the one with the happy knack of wicket-taking. Importantly, he lives up to the hype, time and again.
The very next ball, Thakur got the centurion from the last match, Ishan Kishan, for no score. He caught a feather touch down the leg side. In consecutive matches, Thakur has snapped two early wickets. A late inclusion in the LSG squad to bolster their severely depleted bowling attack, Thakur finished with 4-0-34-4.
Travis Head was going strong at the other end. Thanks to Thakur’s early strikes, they were 62/2 with the field up. Still heavy striking, but short of their customary dizzying start.
Talking about luck, Head had his fair share. He could have been out twice in the seventh over. How often does Pooran drop a skier? This time the West Indian did. Then, Ravi Bishnoi failed to latch on to a sharp return catch. Head was on 36 and 42 when his catches were dropped. He couldn’t make them pay though. Eventually falling on 47 (28b). Again, not by chance. LSG’s young pacer from Delhi, Prince Yadav was gutsy enough to bowl a fuller length. Head missed and Prince’s speedy delivery dismantled the Australian’s woodwork.
Prince did an admirable job (4-0-29-1) by constantly attacking the stumps at decent pace, with a sprinkling of slower balls to keep the batters guessing. Prince’s work in the middle overs pushed SRH scoring rate below 10 for the first time around the 14th over mark.
We knew SRH weren’t going to die wondering despite the loss of wickets. At 128/5 in the 15th, Aniket Verma, in his first IPL, kept swinging and collected four sixes in eight balls with clean striking against LSG’s spinners – two each against Bishnoi and Digvesh Rathi.
After he perished, SRH lost another wicket in the pursuit of quick runs. At 156/7 in the 16th with the fear of being bowled out, what was Pat Cummins’ response? Three sixes off the first three balls he faced.
Sticking to their high-risk template all the way through meant that they still managed plenty of 10-plus run overs to finish with 190. On the batting friendly deck, it wasn’t enough though.
