IPL 2018: 5 crucial factors from Sunrisers Hyderabad’s win over Kings XI Punjab

In yet another low scoring thriller, Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Kings XI Punjab by 13 runs in IPL 2018 at Hyderabad on Thursday. The match followed a similar pattern as Hyderabad’s weak batting put up 132 runs on the board and then their masterful bowling once again did the job. Punjab, on the other hand, didn’t do much wrong but paid the price for not doing the basics right and with the loss, they slipped to the third position on the points table.

Let’s look at five crucial points:

1. Why is Alex Hales still on the bench?:

Sunrisers Hyderabad are struggling with the bat big time and apart from captain Kane Williamson, no other batsman is looking in form and it once again exposed their brittle batting line-up. Hyderabad are already missing Australian David Warner, so the non-inclusion of Englishman Alex Hales remains a big mystery. Hales has been a very good T20 player and his record speaks for itself. Hales has scored 4,704 runs in 174 T20 matches at a strike rate of 143.54 and is a big basher of a cricket ball.

SRH needs impetus and power at the top of the order and their superior bowling cannot bail them out every single time.

2. Ankit Rajpoot blasting SRH:

Kings XI Punjab’s paceman Ankit Rajput may not feature in your fantasy eleven, but after his impressive showing against Delhi Daredevils, the Uttar Pradesh seamer once again had a memorable spell as he picked up 5/14 in four overs and helped Punjab restrict Hyderabad to 132.

Rajpoot bowled with pace and fire and got the big wickets of Williamson and Shikhar Dhawan and also bowled well at the death. Despite being on the losing side, Rajpoot once again bagged the man of the match award and proved that after this year’s IPL he will not remain unknown.

3. Punjab’s batting struggling after Gayle and Rahul’s departure:

One of the main success of Punjab has been their solid opening partnership of KL Rahul and Chris Gayle and in this match as well, both of them added 55 for the first wicket and it was looking like Punjab would win the match quite easily. But, on the contrary, KXIP batsmen lost their last eight wickets for 42 runs and from the outside, it looked like that the team is relying heavily on Rahul and Gayle.

Punjab have begun the tournament in a great style, but if they want to go the distance in the league then their middle order must contribute and the roles of their middle order batsmen must be clearly defined.

4. Rashid Khan and Shakib Al Hasan strangling KXIP:

When you are defending a relatively low score then if you want to stay in the game than you have to pick up early wickets. SRH didn’t pick up early wickets, but they had a couple of magicians up their sleeve in Rashid Khan and Shakib Al Hasan. Both the spinners had the combined figures of 5/37 in seven overs and gave Hyderabad a great opportunity to win the match.

Rashid Khan might have had a couple of poor performances, but showed his range and class against Punjab and proved that those performances were an aberration. SRH are lucky to have Khan and Hasan strangling opposition sides and their contribution is one of the reasons for SRH’s continuous success.

5. Are low scoring matches fun to watch?:

T20 cricket is all about runs and sixes and nobody is interested in players grafting and building innings. In this slam-bang format, viewers want to see big hitting and lots of runs and Thursday’s match was a bad advertisement for T20 cricket. Low scoring matches can be fun, but the main essence of IPL and T20 cricket is high scoring matches and teams should play on pitches which are full of runs and provide entertainment to kids and audiences.