Royal Challengers Bangalore 68
Sunrisers Hyderabad 72/1 (8/20 ov, T:69)
Sunrisers won by 9 wickets (with 72 balls remaining)
As Royal Challengers Bangalore and Sunrisers Hyderabad locked horns during the 34th match of IPL 2022, it was an amusing experience. The team in Orange won by 9 wickets with 72 balls remaining, leaving no chance to Bangalore to bounce back. They now jumped to 2nd position in the points table. One of the best-looking batting sides of the tournament got all out on just 68 where 9 of their 11 batters scored in single digits. Credit must go to Sunrisers bowlers who bowled in perfect line and length and took wickets consistently.
The openers Abhishek Sharma and Kane Williamson gave a good start to Sunrisers and did not struggle at all, unlike RCB batters. Abhishek hit clean hits and scored 47 off 28 balls. The match was finished by Rahul Tripathi with a clean six in the 8th over.
The losing captain Faf du Plessis looked much sad during the post-match presentation as he talked about what went wrong “Those first four overs…. It’s probably not losing four or five wickets up front. It was a little spicy in that first few overs, the balls swung a little bit, but you still have to find a way to get a good foundation, even if it means you just absorb it a little longer and sacrifice a few runs just to get through that seaming and swinging ball. Then once you’re through it, it would get easier. Looking at other matches in other games, it looked like this wicket looked probably the best out of every one so far. Our expectation was this would be a very good wicket, but in all good wickets, you still have to assess in those first two overs. There’s no excuses. You still need to find a way. Marco Jansen the way he bowled in that first over was very good, swinging the ball both ways and obviously getting some big wickets. A day like today is not great, so you want to make sure you don’t get all emotional about a day like today. It’s a bad day at the office, you keep your chin up, it’s a long tournament, and in a day or two when we look at this game, we make sure we get the learning from it so when we play these guys again or come back to this ground, there is a bit of learning that has happened for us as a team going forward.”
Meanwhile, the winning captain Kane Williamson credited his bowlers and looked extremely happy. He said “It was one of those days really. There was a little bit in the air and the guys bowled beautifully and we caught well. For things to unfold like that, you need a bit to go your way and we got that. Obviously we got that. It was an outstanding performance but a lot went our way. So for us it’s about going back to our plans and looking at the next challenge. There’s a lot of strike power there and the balls are swinging this season a lot more than other seasons so we’re trying to make use of that as a side. I think we’ve seen a lot of wickets in the Powerplay, and for us to take those wickets in the Powerplay was a great start to the match. [On Marco Jansen] Off the field, he’s always up for a laugh. He’s always very focused and very clear on what he wants to do. He clearly had an outstanding match today and he’s got the skills to do that. When the ball is swinging a little bit, and a little bit of grass on the surface, he’s a real threat for us. So it was great that he was able to get the rewards today. [On boosting net run rate] Obviously you want to win every game and that’s the first goal, and then you want to try to do it as well as you can and it was great we were able to do that today. [On Abhishek Sharma] There wasn’t a lot of chat. He knew the drill. He’s timing the ball beautifully and he’s played a number of amazing match-winning knocks for us. There were a lot of contributions today and throughout the first half of the season so far but we know we have a lot of challenges coming up.”
PLAYER OF THE MATCH- MARCO JANSEN
