On Monday, Sunrisers Hyderabad finally got back to winning track in the Premier League as Jason Roy, and Kane Williamson navigated the side through a run-chase of 165 against Rajasthan Royals.
Playing his first match for SRH after coming on board, Roy had an excellent debut in the ‘orange army’ shirt as he played a measured and vital knock of 60 from 42 deliveries. He stitched a crucial stand of 57 at the top with his opening partner Wriddhiman Saha, who also made a valuable cameo of 18 from 11 balls.
Once Saha was dismissed, the English batter was joined by captain, and they went about chasing the remaining 108 runs with great control against an RR attack that lacked the quality and depth to ever challenge them. Roy brought up his half-century before being dismissed, trying to scoop left-arm pacer Chetan Sakariya and edging the ball to the keeper.
But Williamson hung on and kept at his sedate but mighty effective ways. It was him who ensured RR had no backdoor entry into the contest after Roy’s wicket, which was followed by the departure of young Priyam Garg for a first-ball duck. Williamson struck five fours and one maximum in his unbeaten 41-ball 51 and took SRH to the victory post without any further hiccup.
Comeback man Abhishek Sharma also batted very well for his 16-ball 21 in the latter stages of the run-chase. Required to hold an end while Williamson went about his business, Sharma showed good maturity and played a few attractive strokes also to see his team home.
Hardly any RR bowler threatened to derail SRH’s progress on the night once Roy and Saha gave their team a solid start in the powerplay. Roy and Saha took advantage of the inconsistent bowling on display from even the Royals’ most experienced – Jaydev Unadkat (0/20), Mustafizur Rahman (0/26) and Chris Morris (0/27). Once SRH got away from them in the field restriction phase, RR had no one to hold them back.
Williamson and Roy comfortably batted through the middle phase against spinners Mahipal Lomror (1/22) and Rahul Tewatia (0/32), and there was no real pressure of the asking rate for Sakariya (1/32) to exploit when he was brought on near the end phase against Williamson and Abhishek.
The Royals will be extremely worried about their resources, considering they let an otherwise struggling SRH absolutely nail an all-round performance and pull off a commanding win.
As was the case with the ball, RR had an unsatisfying day with the bat also. Once again, the bulk of the responsibility fell on the shoulders of captain Sanju Samson who looked to cut down risks for the major part of his 57-ball 82. When Samson reached past fifty, he had faced over 40 balls for the innings, having recognised the need for him to bat long or risk letting the opposition get on top of others.
Samson opened his shoulders only towards the death, where he struck SRH’s Siddharth Kaul (2/36) for a couple of sixes. Samson hit one against Rashid Khan (1/31) too, but he largely batted within himself against the great bowler and his experienced pace partner Bhuvneshwar Kumar (1/28).
36 off 23 balls from opening batsman Yashasvi Jaiswal was the second-highest individual score of the innings as RR posted a score of just 164/5, which also they might not have reached if not for Samson holding his ground firmly with both their star overseas players Evin Lewis (6) and Liam Livingstone (4) failing to trouble the scorers much.
Brief scores
Rajasthan Royals 164/5 in 20 overs (Samson 82, Jaiswal 36; Kaul 2/36, Kumar 1/28) lost to Sunrisers Hyderabad 167/3 in 18.3 overs (Roy 60, Williamson 51*; Lomror 1/22, Rahman 1/26) by 7 wickets
