Sunrisers Hyderabad defeated Rajasthan Royals by eight wickets in their Indian Premier League (IPL) match here on Thursday.
Sent into bat, Rajasthan Royals scored 154 for six in the allotted 20 overs. In reply, SRH chased down the target with 11 balls overs to spare at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium.
Manish Pandey top-scored for the winners with an unbeaten 83 off 47 balls while Jason Holder was the most impressive bowler with excellent figures of 3/33 in four overs.
Earlier, Jason Holder led a disciplined bowling display by Sunrisers Hyderabad. Playing his first match of the tournament, Holder (3/33) came up with an impressive bowling effort while also affecting a run out to destabilise the RR innings. Rashid Khan (1/20) and Vijay Shankar (1/15) picked a wicket each.
For RR, Sanju Samson (36 off 26 balls) was the top scorer.
Early on, Robin Uthappa looked in rampaging form, hitting the first four and six of the innings. He quickly raced to 19 off 13 balls.
However, his time in the middle was short lived. After Ben Stokes (32) hit Holder for back-to-back boundaries in the fourth over, the West Indies skipper effected Uthappa’s run out as the Indian was late to turn back at the non-striker’s end.
The powerplay overs yielded 47 runs, including six fours and a maximum, for the loss of one wicket.
The big-hitting Stokes was dropped on 17 in the eighth over by Shankar off a Rashid delivery. Alongside Samson, he kept the scoreboard ticking.
A 56-run stand between the two was broken in the 12th over by Holder. Samson, who had reached his highest score since the 85 against Kings XI Punjab in RR’s second match of the tournament, was bowled by a slow off-cutter, after pulling the previous delivery over midwicket for a huge six.
Stokes’ stay came to an end when the World Cup winning all-rounder was bowled by Rashid in the beginning of the 13th over, with the Sunrisers bowlers making a strong comeback in the middle overs.
RR went lost wickets at regular intervals.
Jos Buttler, too, fell quickly as he was sent back by Shankar in the 16th over with skipper Steve Smith (19) also failing to make an impact.
(With inputs from PTI)
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