Sunrisers Hyderabad openers Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma’s stunning batting helped them chase a target of 166 in just 9.4 overs against Lucknow Super Giants at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad. The Super Giants posted a competitive total on a pitch that didn’t look easy for batting. But the SRH openers played with a different approach and SRH won with 62 deliveries to spare, the earliest a team has reached a 150-plus target in T20 cricket. as well.
“I am lost for words. We have watched that kind of batting on TV. But this is unreal batting,” KL Rahul, the captain of LSG, told the broadcasters at the post-match presentations.
“I don’t think we could have ever expected chasing it like that,” said Travis Head at the post-match press conference. “It looked like a tough wicket in the first innings, it looked like it was holding and a slow pitch. I guess, knowing that as a batter, you know that the powerplay is important. (We were) trying to maximise that and we played beautifully, we were able to get ahead of the rate, which is nice. And once we got going in the first two or three overs, it was just about trying to maximise that as much as we can and I felt we picked our targets and played very well.”
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Meanwhile, Adam Voges, the consultant for LSG this season, has said that the gulf in the powerplay between the two sides was a big factor in the result of the game, and praised the SRH openers for their “incredible batting” as well.
“I think we’re all in awe of what we’ve just seen. Sometimes you got to tip your hat and say well played to the opposition. (They) might have mis-hit one or two balls in the nine and bit overs that we bowled at them. Incredible batting, incredible hitting, clearly we didn’t have an answer for,” said Voges. “I haven’t spoken to the guys yet whether there was a difference in terms of the innings but clearly our powerplay compared to the Sunrisers was at the two extremes.”
“What do you say, 2 for 20 odd as opposed to 100 for none, and that’s the game in itself. We were put under immense pressure with the ball right from the start, we weren’t able to apply the same pressure with the bat to begin with. I thought the backend of our innings was really good, [Ayush] Badoni and [Nicholas] Pooran partnership got us to…it was probably still an under par total but gave us a fighting chance at least. But that obviously was clearly not enough. We thought we at least had a total to be able to defend, We probably thought we still were a little bit short but clearly we could have got 250 and I don’t think that would have been enough.” Voges further added.
However, SRH this season batted first and posted very big totals, and then restricted the opposition. They also faced a couple of big losses while chasing earlier in this competition as well.
“You always want to perform, you always want to be consistent, you always want to try and be doing the job; it’s not going to always happen in T20 cricket (but) I felt the way we have been playing is great. We’re going to have ups and downs, we’ve had that. Nice to be able to chase a score tonight after being put under pressure by them batting (first). A couple of times we’ve chased throughout the season, we’ve been put under pressure. To be able to do the job tonight, and chasing, (it feels great). Looking forward to the next two games being at home as well,” again said Head.
Meanwhile, Travis Head and Abhishek are involved in three-century stands in this IPL, making up a third of the 100-plus opening partnerships this season, and SRH became the only team to have more than one-century opening stand in IPL 2024 as well.
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“It’s nice to just come here and contribute. I wasn’t sure if I was going to play. Nice to get a go, nice to be performing, and the partnership with Abhi has been fantastic. He’s such an exciting talent for Indian cricket, he’s exceptional. We complement each other well and he’s very, very enjoyable to be around. He’s so excited and thinks about the game, he’s got loads of energy, so he’s a great partnership to be involved in,” Head said.
“I guess the Kings game (against Punjab Kings) is a blueprint for us in the way we’re able to go about the game. It’s not always going to work at the top of the order, we are going to lose wickets, but we want to be brave through the whole middle. Nitish [Reddy] has played some unbelievable innings, obviously we’ve got Klassy [Heinrich Klaasen] and [Abdul] Samad tops it off for us…Everyone is high on confidence, everyone is playing well, we’re not dependent on the top order. Yes we are playing well but I don’t think it defines the team. I feel like we’ve got a really strong middle order…we’re very well rounded at the moment,” concluded Travis Head.
