The Royals lost the wickets of Shane Watson, Dishant Yagnik and Ajinkya Rahane in successive over to dent their run chase of 133 runs.
The party started when Darren Sammy took a brilliant catch on the boundary off Karan Sharma's bowling to get rid of Watson.
Watson (24 off 15) hit 5 boundaries in his innings and put up a 37-run stand with Rahane to steady the Rajasthan run chase after losing Rahul Dravid early.
Sammy then came into the attack and ended Yagnik's (0) misery by getting the better of the Rajasthan batsman's off-stump.
In the very next over, Amit Mishra rubber more salt on the Royals' wounds by catching Rahane off of his own bowling.
A leading edge off Ishant Sharma's good length delivery got Dravid (12) caught by Karan Sharma at point.
Earlier, Rajasthan Royals produced a disciplined bowling performance as they restricted Sunrisers Hyderabad to 132 for seven.
All the Royals bowlers did a splendid job as Sunrisers batsmen could never really force the pace during the entire 20 overs save West Indies skipper Darren Sammy (29, 3x6) striking a few lusty blows during the fag end of the innings.
Shikhar Dhawan (33, 39 balls, 3x4) was the other significant contributor although his innings was an uncharacteristic one by his standards as the slowness of the track did not help his cause either.
While Vikramjeet Malik (2/14) provided twin breakthroughs, James Faulkner (1/28) and Siddharth Trivedi (1/18) consistently hit the right length on a track that was totally different from the one on which Chennai Super Kings batsmen ran riot in the Qualifier on Tuesday.
Portly Himachal Pradesh medium pacer Malik was rewarded for his wicket-to-wicket bowling as he removed Parthiv Patel (1) and Hanuma Vihari (1) off successive overs.
Parthiv closed the face of the bat to a delivery that landed on the good length spot and Sanju Samson, stationed at extra cover, ran backwards to take a tumbling catch.
In his very next over, Malik removed Vihari with a back of the length delivery which climbed on the batsman who offered a simple catch to mid-on fielder Kevon Cooper.
Two down for only three runs, it was skipper Cameron White (31, 28 balls, 5x4), who joined Dhawan as they started the damage control, adding 52 runs for the third wicket in 8.3 overs.
Dhawan, who was a spectator all this while, finally got into the act with a couple of cover driven boundaries -- one each of Faulkner and Malik.
White also played a perfect straight drive off Malik apart from a cracking a square cut. But the perennially low and slow Kotla track provided quite a challenge for 'local boy' Dhawan and White as the ball did not come onto the bat. The six overs of powerplay yielded only 27 runs.
Credit goes to the Royals bowlers for keeping the Sunrisers batsmen under tight leash during the first 10 overs which produced only 48 runs.
None of the Royals bowlers tried any variations. They kept it straight, either pitching it on the three-quarter length.
The relentless pressure saw White committing a 'hara-kiri' as he tried to pull a length ball from Siddharth Trivedi only to present a simple skier to Cooper fielding at wide mid-off.
It was inexplicable to gauge Dhawan's approach as he was happy playing a lot of dot balls with an occasional single here and there.
To break the shackles, Dhawan did try some innovations. With fine leg brought up, Dhawan scooped Faulkner over in-field to get a boundary.
However, when he tried it off the very next delivery, he did not get the required elevation as Trivedi at short fine-leg took an easy catch. It was then left to Sammy to give the innings some impetus towards the end.
Teams:
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Parthiv Patel (wk), Shikhar Dhawan, Hanuma Vihari, Cameron White (Capt.), Thisara Perera, Darren Sammy, Biplab Samantray, Karan Sharma, Amit Mishra, Dale Steyn, Ishant Sharma.
Rajasthan Royals: Rahul Dravid (Capt.), Ajinkya Rahane, Shane Watson, Sanju Samson, Stuart Binny, Brad Hodge, Dishant Yagnik (wk), James Faulkner, Kevon Cooper, Vikramjeet Malik, Siddharth Trivedi.
0 comments:
Post a Comment