The new-look and re-energised Rajasthan Royals took off from the start and hammered Sunrisers Hyderabad by 61 runs on Tuesday to start their IPL-15 campaign on a high note.
Skipper Sanju Samson led from the front with a brilliant 55 in just 27 balls to help his team reach 210 for six. In every way, RR beat SRH.
Smarting from the beating they took in the first half of their first game, SRH didn’t have much of a chance against RR after a bad start to their innings that saw them fall to 9/3 and then 29/4.
There were no more runs for Kane Williamson’s (2) team. The captain had a bad day at work.
A lot of that came from Aiden Markram’s unbeaten 57 and Washington Sundar’s 14-ball 40. Sundar, who had a bad game with the ball, made up for it with the bat.
Samson and Devdutt Padikkal (41 off 29 balls; 4×4; 6×2) added 73 runs for the third wicket off 41 balls before Shimron Hetmyer smashed 32 off 13 balls to help RR reach 200.
As he hit five maximums and three boundaries, Samson didn’t spare any bowler during his entertaining stay in the middle.
Later, Hetymar hit three sixes to make things even worse for SRH.
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The bowlers, led by leg-spinner Yuzvedra Chahal (3/22 in 4 overs), did their job for RR.
Sunrisers lost their top batter Williamson after a diving catch by Padikkal, then lost Rahul Tripathi (0) to Prasidh Krishna for the second time in the day. The score went up to 9/3 when Trent Boult caught Nicolas Pooran (0) in the middle of the field.
In quick succession, Abhishek Sharma and Abdul Samad were taken out by Chahal as Sunrisers lost half their team for 37 runs and looked like they were going to lose by a big margin. This made things even worse.
But Markram, Romario Shepherd (24) and Sundar, who scored 24 runs in the 17th over, pushed back the inevitable and cut the loss by a little.
Nathan Coulter-Nile hurt himself when he landed in the last over and had to be taken off.
No balls gave Jos Buttler a life at the start of the game for the Royals. Buttler (35), Yashasvi Jaiswal (20), and the rest made a great start, adding 58 runs to set the stage for a big score.
Buttler was very rough on Umran Malik in the fourth over. He hit him for two fours and two sixes, and RR made 21 runs.
Then, a six from Sundar (0/47) put RR on 52 for five in five overs.
On the other hand, Jaiswal died in the seventh over when he hit Markram off Shepherd. However, Buttler was out at the start of the 9th over as RR fell to 75-2. He hit three fours and three sixes during that time.
Samson hit a four and a six over long-off and another over fine-leg to show that he was ready to take on the SRH attack right away.
Samuel could hit the fence at will, but Padikkal also got into the swing of things and started hitting in the 12th over when he hit a maximum.
Another time, Samson hit Sundar for two sixes in the 16th over as RR kept going.
SRH quickly removed Paddikkal and Samson, but a lot of damage had already been done by then. Hetmyer added huge hits to the bowling team’s woes as RR scored 123 runs in the last 10 overs.
