PATHAN POWER TAKES KKR HOME
Sunrisers Hyderabad suffered their third successive defeat at home to disappoint a Sunday crowd at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in their IPL game here. The Kolkata Knight Riders snatched a seven- wicket win with two balls to spare to come out shining.
The Knights rode on key contributions from Robin Uthappa ( 40), Manish Pandey ( 35), Yusuf Pathan ( 39 n. o.) and a 15- ball cameo from Ryan ten Doeschate ( 25 n. o) to overhaul the 143- run target and consolidate their fourth position on the points table.
The Sunrisers managed to take the match to the last over though, thanks to brilliant bowling by seamer Dale Steyn and leg- spinner Karn Sharma.
The visitors recovered well from an early hiccup. After the loss of captain Gautam Gambhir ( 6), Uthappa and Pandey were involved in a 51- run stand for the second wicket. Pandey then raised a further 45 with Yusuf Pathan, who in turn got together with Doeschate to stitch an unfinished partnership of 42 for the fourth wicket to seal the game.
Yusuf had a field day for sure — he took two catches and had a hand in a runout in the first half of the match.
The Sunrisers changed their captain — Darren Sammy replaced Shikhar Dhawan — even as the latter kept his place in the side as an opening batsman. It clearly disturbed Dhawan’s mind though, evident from his disjoint- ed batting performance. The Delhi dasher lacked rhythm as he scampered 19 runs quite a few of them through edges and cuts. Later, he dropped a skier off Robin Uthappa when the batsman was on 9 and the KKR total read 21/ 1 after five overs.
After raining runs in the previous match against powerful Punjab Kings, the Sunrisers hit a dry patch against an average KKR to disappoint a holiday crowd. The 142/ 8 was certainly short and a huge challenge for their bowlers to defend. Barring the toss, nothing went right for the home side. The sub- standard scoring rate told the story. SRH eked out 37 runs between the 5th and 10th overs; just 32 between overs 10 and 15; and a mere 33 in the last five overs. David Warner was the top scorer for the hosts who also benefited from the generosity of the KKR bowlers.