Sunrises keep up impressive turnaround; outplay Punjab by 7 Wickets for 4th Straight win
By Our Special Correspondent
The Sunrises Hyderabad top order looked out of sorts again. Nicholas Pooran looked like an expensive flop. Again at least that was the knee-jerk reaction after the opening two games. They are form team of the Indian Premier League. On Sunday, they eased past Punjab Kings whose chaos was no match for Hyderabad’s calm, composed brand of cricket. After beginning the season with back-to-back losses, the basic building blocks – Aiden Markram as a finisher, Umran Malik as a wicket-taking enforcer through the middle and death overs and a bowling attack that embodies frugality – were already there. To that concoction, they have added Rahul Tripathi’s enterprise at the top.
They replaced Shepherd with Marco Jansen and fully embraced their principal strength. All four of their frontline bowlers are seamers(Malik, Bhuvneshwar, Janseen and T Natarajan) it’s hard to argue their returns. Kumar may have fallen out of favour with the Indian team. This year, he is fourth-best (39) for dot balls. Jansen, who has shared the new ball with Kumar, is already ninth-best with 32 even though he was featured in four games.
The left-armer has the joint-most wickets with 12 while Malik’s pace is a double-edged sword for batters. On Sunday, Malik became just for the fourth bowler in the league’s history to bowl a 20th over maiden while picking three wickets in the process. Overall, his 4/28(15dots) helped restrict Punjab to 151.
Now 151 can be a big target for a team like Hyderabad who set up to approach a T20 match like a shortened ODIs. This is where Tripathi and Markram have helped them a lot. Both of them provided the thrust after a typically watchful start. Hyderabad’s other eight batters have scored 512 (averaging 23.27). These two they have made 395(79).
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