Sunrisers Hyderabad outclassed the Rajasthan Royals at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium on Friday to reach their third final in the Indian Premier League. The Orange Army stunned their opponents with the ball by introducing their spin duo of Shahbaz Ahmed and Abhishek Sharma after posting a fighting total of 175 on the board.
Both Shahbaz (3/23) and Abhishek (2/24) ensured that RR never got their noses ahead in the chase as they kept dismissing their lethal batters cheaply. As SRH managed to set another meeting with the Kolkata Knight Riders in the summit clash, skipper Pat Cummins revealed that he had brought Shahbaz Ahmed as the impact substitute on the advice of the team’s head coach, Daniel Vettori.
A slow left-arm orthodox bowler himself, the former Kiwi spinner read the conditions to perfection.
“That was Vettori’s choice, left-arm orthodox and wanted as many left-arm orthodox as possible,” Cummins said as he revealed the plan of bringing Shahbaz Ahmed as the impact substitute in the game.
While the Pat Cummins-led side had showcased its batting prowess in the season so far, it was their bowling unit and that too a sporadic combination that rose to the occasion.
“That was a surprise, tried to stick one out of him with a couple of right-handers and he bowled beautifully and those two won it with their bowling in the middle overs. We knew our strength was our batting and we wouldn’t underestimate the experience we have in this squad, it’s a dream having Bhuvi, Nattu and Unadkat, makes my job easy,” Cummins said.
As the Royals chose to bowl first, they sought to capitalise on the slow nature of the Chennai-based pitch. They counted on the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin, the leading wicket-taker at the venue and Yuzvendra Chahal, who was then the highest-wicket-taker in the side, to grip the ball and perplex the SRH batsmen. However, it was their pace unit that did the damage as their spinners went wicketless.
Sanju Samson and co. relied heavily on the dew factor in their batting stint but the move resulted in a hit-back with the ball griping viciously as they could only manage to score 139, losing a chance to lift their second title in IPL history.