Star SRH batter Ishan Kishan scored 106 not out off 47 balls in the second match of IPL 2025. In the 12th innings, he smashed 94 not out in 48 balls against RCB as well. However, he failed to step up in other innings as well. One of the many reasons they failed to do well this season was Kishan’s lack of runs throughout the IPL, alongside Travis Head as well.

“I think that if your opening partnership, which was so effective last year, between Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma – Abhishek has played well this season but Head hasn’t been able to do it – then your No. 3 has a huge responsibility,” Kumble said on ESPNcricinfo’s Time Out. “His start to the season was great, but after that he was not in form. That certainly impacted the SRH performance. Not to forget that Klaasen couldn’t do what was expected of him either. Nitish [Kumar] Reddy too. Aniket [Verma] played well, but if your main batters are not in form, maybe when you don’t qualify for the playoffs you think about all these things.”

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However, Ishan Kishan has scored 44 and 35, those have taken him 34 and 28 balls respectively recently as well until he found his rhythm again on Friday.

“He was under a lot of pressure going into this game,” Tom Moody said of Kishan. “He would have felt the fact that he has had a poor season even though he started very well. We were talking about that and you can guarantee [that] around the franchise, they were probably talking about it: do we keep him, do we retain him, what do we do, how do we go about it.”

“I think he’s made it very clear today that he is being retained, if there was any doubt. The composure stood out to me. And just his continued braveness to take the game on. Obviously helped because it was happening at the other end as well,” he added.

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“The last two matches, our batting performance has been very solid, we’ve achieved large scores, match-winning scores,” Helmot said. “Obviously, our batters assessed the wicket [on Friday] and we felt it was a very nice wicket to bat on and a large score was going to be required. So, we maintained that aggressive approach but it was still important to have a batter in at the very end to ensure that we could capitalise on those last few overs. So, I think as a batting unit, we maintained the course.

“I think we’ll always be aggressive and always be positive but we’ll always try to be smart as well and understand that not all surfaces play the same way. And so, a score of 170 or 180 might be a match-winning score [in some places]. So, we’ve never sought to try and make over 200 every innings but if we believe that the surface is good enough and our batters can get some partnerships together, then you can get those match-winning scores.”