Rajasthan Royals’ star batter Vaibhav Sooryavanshi was unaware of the record for the fastest century in the IPL, which he missed by three runs, but he also said that his focus was on hitting sixes and scoring maximum runs against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Eliminator on Wednesday. Sooryavanshi smashed 97 runs off just 29 balls with 12 sixes and five fours at a huge strike rate of 334.48 to help RR beat SRH by 47 runs as well.
“I got to know after the game,” he said at the post-match presentation. “My focus was on hitting a six. I will score centuries in the future, but the focus was on getting maximum runs for the team. I just work on my plan, and if there are any shortcomings, I just try to work on that.”
On his preparation for the game, he said, “I try to just analyse how to face the bowlers, judge the length of the boundaries. When I am showing good intent, the bowler is under pressure. We have won so we will celebrate and try to do well in the next game. I don’t think much about the bowlers; I try to just play my game.”
However, RR captain Riyan Parag said that the team management tries to give Sooryavanshi his space.
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“We don’t have many conversations; we just leave him alone. We give him a lot of batting practice, and he does his thing.”
Analysing the game, he said, “I like to be a perfectionist, but even today we should have got 260, right? But with the ball, we were impressive, held our own. It was a good performance under pressure. You could say that. It also brings out the best among people. Everyone has turned up more in these last two games.”
On conversations with England pace bowler Jofra Archer, who returned with figures of 3/58, Riyan said, “We keep on having banter. He is one of the best, if not the best, in T20 cricket, bowling at 150 clicks.”
“Usually the team that gets the most wickets in the powerplay wins, and we did that. You just have to hold your nerve (while bowling to the SRH top order). Your good balls and bad balls are going to the boundary, so you have to hang in there,” Archer said. “It was very exciting. The more runs he scores, the more runs we have to defend. He can get 150. One game at a time. We are going in the right direction. We don’t want what happened to Kings XI to happen to us.”
However, SRH captain Pat Cummins said that the defeat to losing wickets in a heap at the wrong time as well.
“A few things have to go right to chase 245, but we lost a couple of wickets at the wrong time. (SRH were) one tiny bit away from being in the top two, but can’t doubt the boys’ efforts,” he said. “He played pretty well. A very good pitch, but the margins are so small-if you miss your yorker, he doesn’t miss. (It was a) pretty good wicket. We are a very well-rounded team. Praful (Hinge) and Sakib (Hussain) were great. We are one of the youngest teams to get into the playoffs, and the coaching team has unearthed a few gems.”
