Staff Reporter.
Abhishek Sharma and Heinrich Klaasen’s half-centuries were enough to secure a nine-run win for Sunrisers Hyderabad in their Tata India Premier League match against Delhi Capitals at the Arun Jaitley Stadium on Saturday.
The win pops SRH one slot up to sixth on the table.
Aiden Markram’s team reversed the result five days ago when DC defeated SRH in Hyderabad. Abhishek’s masterful 67 off 36 and Klaasen’s unbeaten 53 off 27 propelled SRH to 197 for six. And despite exemplary batting from Mitch Marsh (63 off 39) and Phil Salt (59 off 35), DC could only manage to 188 for six.
197 is the highest score at the Arun Jaitley Stadium this season.
Abhishek Sharma stood tall and singlehandedly built a platform from which SRH could build their innings. Abhishek struck 12 fours and a single six on his way to a brilliant 67 off 36.
While wickets were tumbling around him, Abhishek seemed to have an answer for everything the DC bowlers presented, whether it was high pace, slower balls or spin. He appeared to be batting on a different pitch. After 11 overs, SRH had scored 17 boundaries, 12 of them had come off Abhishek’s bat.
Heinrich Klaasen chose the right time to bring up his maiden IPL half-century. The Proteas player capitalized on the platform created by Abhishek and took the visitors as close to 200 as he could. Klaasen and Abdul Samad (28) scored SRH’s only partnership worth more than 50 runs. The partnership’s 53 runs came off 33 balls. Klaasen also shared a crucial 35-run partnership with Akeal Hosein (16).
Later in the day, Mitch Marsh followed up his four-wicket haul with a half-century, his third IPL half-century as he fought to lead DC to victory. Marsh and Phil Salt stitched a sensational 112-run partnership that put DC in the driving seat. However, SRH’s spinners led by Mayank Markande closed the tap on the boundaries and took three wickets for 13 runs in three overs to turn the match around.
DC did not recover from the loss of the two batters. Besides Axar Patel (29 off 14), no other DC batter got going. None reached the 20-run mark.
Markande was exceptional, taking two wickets for a miserly five runs an over in his four overs. T Natarajan and Abhishek Sharma took a wicket each and were the other bowlers with economies of less than 10 runs an over. Natarajan went at a rate of 8.5, while Abhishek went at 8.66 runs an over.
Delhi Capitals: David Warner (capt), Phil Salt (wk), Mitchell Marsh, Manish Pandey, Axar Patel, Oriyam Garg, Ripal Patel, Anrich Nortje, Kuldeep Yadav, Ishant Sharma, Mukesh Kumar.
Sunrisers Hyderabad: Mayank Agarwal, Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram (capt), Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Harry Brook, Abdul Samad, Mayank Markande, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Akeal Hosein, Umran Malik.