Expectations were high from Delhi Capitals (DC) after their two back to back wins but unfortunately, they couldn't overcome Sunrisers Hyderabad's (SRH) score of 162 to make it three in a row.
Match Score
1st Innings:- Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH): 162/4 (20 overs)
2nd Innings:- Delhi Capitals (DC): 147/7 (20 overs)
SRH openers D Warner & J Bairstow gave them a slow but a steady start. Both the players held their wicket and scored 77 runs together. The pitch wasn't easy to bat and that was evitable by the way J Bairstow batted. K Williamson though played a tactically correct inning to score at a brisk pace in his first match of the tournament. DC Bowlers especially Rabada was excellent and didn't give away runs in the death overs as well.
DC lost their in form player P Shaw early to B Kumar. S Dhawan and S Iyer tried to built a partnership but they never got going, Iyer struggled to make quick runs in this match as well. Apart from S Hetmyer and later on K Rabada no batsman looked comfortable on the crease.
Top Performers of the Match
Batsmen:-
J Bairstow (SRH): 53(48)
D Warner (SRH): 45(33)
K Williamson (SRH): 41(26)
Bowlers:-
R Khan (SRH): 14/3
K Rabada (DC): 21/2
B Kumar (SRH): 25/1
Player of the Match
Rashid Khan was declared Man of the Match for his miserly bowling performance.
Captain's Corner
D Warner:
The plan to go with Williamson instead of M Nabi despite his good performance in the previous match played dividend for SRH. He rotated his bowlers extremely well and the way he assessed the pitch earlier in their innings while batting and decided to play a calculative innings was the key for the match.
S Iyer:
After the fall of his wicket, he could have promoted M Stoinis to keep the left-hand & right-hand combination going plus Stoinis could have scored faster. I believe he can use Stoinis better when it comes to his batting.
Stats Corner
After Eleven matches every team has one at least one match in the tournament.
This year's edition seems to be the most open IPL as compared to the earlier editions. It is in a way similar to the first year of IPL(2008). People don't know what to expect from the tournament. To talk about this match, SRH looked a different batting unit with the inclusion of Kiwi captain Kane Williamson. Their bowling was excellent today but apart from Bhuvi and Rashid other bowlers too needs to perform consistently. DC needs to sort out their strike rate issue in the middle overs because even in the matches that they had won they did not score fluently in the middle overs.