Hyderabad: Shikhar Dhawan scored a half century as Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) beat Mumbai Indians by 7 wickets in their Indian Premier League (IPL) match at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium.
Dhawan combined brilliantly with Moises Henriques (44 off 35 balls) to boost SRH’s chances to reaching the play-offs.
SRH, who were set a target of 139 runs, reached the target with ten balls to spare losing three wicket in the process.
After the match, Mumbai Indians captain Rohit Sharma said: “The batting went wrong tonight. 138 was too less on that wicket. We knew the wicket wasn’t easy but we got nowhere near a good score. Sunrisers bowled well and kept us guessing. We just wanted to try something different by batting first today, and it didn’t pay off.”
“I think batting second was much easier, but 138 is too less. If you don’t take wickets, it’s always going to be hard. We discussed that we need wickets in the interval, but Shikhar batted well. It’s an eye-opener for us on what to do when we bat first, what to do in the first six overs and little things like that. We could be put into bat, it won’t always be in our favour, so we have a lot of learning from this loss.”
After the win, Hyderabad have 15 points and are all but qualified for the play-offs. The defending champions can be in a spot of bother if they lose their final game and Kings XI win their remaining three games.
Earlier, the defending champions put up a disciplined bowling effort to restrict Mumbai Indians to 138 for 7 in 20 overs.
Winning the toss and electing to bat, Mumbai initially struggled on a slower pitch and needed Rohit Sharma's sublime 67 off 45 deliveries to get to 13 for /7 in a crucial match for Hyderabad as far as play-offs chances are concerned. Mumbai's second-highest scorer was Parthiv Patel with 23.
The classy stroke-maker that he is, Rohit was the only batsman who could take on against Siddharth Kaul (3/24), Bhuvneshwar Kumar (2/29), Mohammad Nabi (1/13) and Rashid Khan (1/22).
Hyderabad captain David Warner exploited the slowish nature of the wicket as he introduced Afghan off-spinner Nabi in the second over and the latter gave no rooms for the Mumbai batsmen to go for shots.
Brief Scores
Sunrisers Hyderabad 140 for 3 (Dhawan 62*, Henriques 44) beat Mumbai Indians 138 for 7 (Rohit 67, Kaul 3-24, Bhuvneshwar 2-29) by seven wickets.
