Without bring affected by the heroics of Chris Gayle and the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) skipper Virat Kohli, it was Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) who managed to win their first Indian Premier League title by 8 runs since they came into the tournament in 2013. SRH scored a massive total of 208 runs for the loss of 7 wickets with the help of their skipper David Warner who scores a brilliant knock of 69 runs in 28 balls.
David Warner with the help of his opening partner Shikhar Dhawan (28 off 25) formed a 63 runs stand for the first wicket making a platform for his teammates to score big. The T20 specialist and an aggressive batman Yuvraj Singh, too contributed in the innings when it needed the most. He scored 38 in 23 deliveries. But the most interesting and marvelous innings came from an Australian Ben Cutting, who not only entertained the crowd with hitting massive boundaries at the end of the game and turned the momentum towards the eagles but he also helped the SRH innings to got past the figure of 200.
Although RCB bowlers managed to take SRH wickets, all of them conceded big runs resulting into the target which was looking highly difficult for RCB after the first innings. Chris Jordan and S Aravind took 3 and 2 wickets respectively along with the mystery spinner and second highest wicket taker of the tournament Yuzvendra Chahal.
In response, when Chris Gayle and the star batsman Virat Kohli came into the middle, they started off cautiously, taking single and rotating the strike keeping in mind the wickets which was an important while chasing a big target of 208. As soon as they got settled, both started to hit the ball hard trying to get a boundary in every over. Chris Gayle, as usual, started the firework with scoring 76 in 38 balls. When the duo was playing it was the game of RCB. Both made a 114 runs partnership for the first wicket before Gayle got out on a delivery by Bipul Sharma. After Gayle AB de Villiers came and hopes were still there of RCB fans. However, one big blow by Barinder Sran of Virat Kohli, just after completing his half century, gave a big dent to the RCB hopes as well as ending the Virat Kohli’s innings on total runs of 973 in the tournament, behind by just 1 run of the record of Sir Don Bradman.
After the Virat’s wicket, nobody could score a partnership which was needed, including the top guns AB de Villiers, Shane Watson and KL Rahul. Ben Cutting continued his form with the ball as well and took 2 important wickets along with Barinder Sran and Mustafizur Rahman. Bhuvaneshwar Kumar again proved his talent bowling outstandingly, especially in the death overs, even though he could not take wickets.
Eventually, proving the prowess with the ball and the bat as well, it was SRH who kept their nerves under control and won themselves a maiden IPL trophy despite the great but unsuccessful reply from the RCB batsmen.
By Prajakt K
