Sharjah: Glenn Maxwell could well be the luckiest man in the cricketing world at the moment if Kings XI Punjab’s encounter against Sunrisers Hyderabad is anything to go by.
Two teams have been at the receiving end of his brutal assault and Hyderabad yesterday could have avoided that fate had their Australian signing David Warner not grassed a sitter when Maxwell was on 11.
From then on, it was all about Maxwell whose only disappointment from the game could be the fact that on a third successive occasion, he missed out on a hundred.
He ended up with 95 runs but not before hitting nine sixes, five boundaries leading Kings XI Punjab to a big 72 runs win over Sunrisers Hyderabad, their third straight win in IPL 7.
Sunrisers Hyderabad had established a reputation of being good defenders in IPL 6 while this season Kings XI Punjab have made light work of huge totals in their previous two games.
Yesterday, Sunrisers Hyderabad is skipper Shikhar Dhawan thought differently after winning the toss and opted to field first.
Led by Maxwell, KXIP posted 193/6 and later put up a superior show with the ball, led by Lakshmipathy Balaji (4/13), to bowl them out for 121 in 19.2 overs. Chasing a huge total under lights, Sunrisers Hyderabad needed their top order firing on all cylinders. None of the batsmen got even a whiff of a start and they ended losing by 72 runs.
Agencies
