Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Rajasthan Royals by 8 wickets to register a comfortable victory in match 40 of IPL 2020 in Dubai. Doing so, they keep themselves alive in the race for the playoffs. Meanwhile, this loss makes the road for the playoffs, even more, tougher for the Royals. SRH has moved upto the fifth position in the points table courtesy of this win. Meanwhile, the Royals drop down to number seven. More about the SRH vs RR match report in detail below.
SRH won the toss and opted to bowl first. Jason Holder, who replaced Kane Williamson in the side for this game, took 3 for 33 in his spell to limit The Royals to 154. He was well supported by Rashid Khan and Vijay Shankar.
Sanju Samson (36) top-scored for the Royals with Robin Uthappa (19), Ben Stokes (30) got starts at the top-order but failed to kick on to get a big score. The idea of keeping Jos Buttler in the middle-order did not work this time as he was dismissed for 12 off just nine deliveries. Steve Smith also failed with the bat scoring 19 runs. In the final overs, Riya Parag (20) and Jofra Archer’s( 16 of 7) cameo helped the Royals get past 150 mark and ultimately finish on 154.
Sunrisers Hyderabad Still Alive in IPL 2020
Sunrisers Hyderabad had a torrid start to their chase. Jofra Archer ran through David Warner and Jonny Bairstow to bring SRH down to 16 for 2 inside the first three overs.
However, Manish Pandey (83 off 47) and Vijay Shankar’s (52 off 51) counter-attacking knocks helped Sunrisers get back into the match. The duo stitched an unbeaten 140-run stand to give SRH an important win at this phase of the competition.
Pandey scored his third fifty this season, while this was Shankar’s first fifty-plus score since IPL 2018. They won with 11 balls to spare thereby maintaining a positive net run-rate which reads +0.092
at the moment.
What Was the Turning Point In The Game?
Archer picked up two wickets inside the powerplay in his first two overs. Steve Smith’s decision to not give him a third over at two new batsmen, proved to be the turning point in the game. As it turned out, SRH did not lose any more wickets as Pandey and Shankar played with responsibility and maturity to take their team through. This was also the first game that the Sunrisers won chasing in this season.
Manish Pandey for his matchwinning 83 was adjudged as the Man of the Match. He now has scored 295 runs from 10 games including three fifties.
“I just wanted to stay on the wicket and play my shots. Really happy that it came off today. We had the opportunity to win the game for SRH, really happy I’m standing here. We had plans to see Jofra off. We had a plan to take on the leggies and Indian bowlers, and it paid off” said Pandey.
