It was the skipper David Warner’s absolutely outstanding knock of 93 in just 58 deliveries that helped the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) to win against Gujarat Lions on Friday at Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium, Delhi in Qualifier 2 of the IPL playoffs and they will now play against Virat Kohli’s Royal Challengers Bangalore in the final of IPL 9 at Bengaluru on Sunday.

After the middle failed to perform in the crucial match along with his opening partner Shikhar Dhawan, David Warner, alone took the team out of the danger and helped SRH to enter the final of this year’s Indian Premiere League (IPL). The wickets for SRH fell at regular intervals when they were chasing 162 set by Gujarat Lions earlier. The last match’s hero Yuvraj Singh could not perform on Friday and it was David Warner, who scored most of the runs. When only 4 wickets were remaining and it could be anybody’s game, David Warner got the much help from the lower order batsman Bipul Sharma who scored 27 in 11 deliveries with hitting some brilliant shots scoring three big maximums. He helped his skipper to finish off the remaining job.

Earlier, Gujarat Lions with the help of top scorer Aaron Finch’s half century in 32 balls reached to a satisfactory total of 162 with scoring high in the death overs. SRH bowling without their key bowler Mustafizur Rahman, played with Trent Boult who was playing in his first IPL match of the season. Brendan McCullum, too scored 32 in the initial stage which was being capitalized by Dinesh Karthik who scores 26-runs. At the end, dangerous looking Dwyane Bravo could not hold on in the middle and he scored 20 runs.

SRH’s top class fielding, above average death bowling by Bhuvneshwar Kumar and the top class batting by David Warner were the main key points of the match which led SRH to the victory. They’ll now play against RCB in their first IPL final since their launch in 2013.

By Prajakt K.