Bhuvneshwar Kumar picked up five wickets for 19 runs. (Source: BCCI)
When the second time-out was called in Hyderabad, Sunrisers Hyderabad were a happy bunch of players. They needed only four wickets to win the match against Kings XI Punjab. The Punjab unit needed 76 runs off 36 balls with only four wickets in hand.
Three overs later, it was KXIP who were on track to pull off a miracle as Manan Vohra made it his own show. He was batting on 85 off 45 balls and was taking his team closer to the target of 160. He was swinging at everything and was getting rewarded as well.
Vohra took Punjab to as close as 15 needed off 10 balls. But that was when it all ended for him. Bhuvneshwar Kumar produced a yorker which hit Vohra on the full and he was adjudged leg-before. And it was left to the final two batsmen, Ishant Sharma and Sandeep Sharma, to fetch nine off the final over. But Siddarth Kaul bowled Ishant off the fifth ball to hand his team a five-run win.
Punjab’s chase was hit hard when they lost Hashim Amla off the first ball of the innings. They were later pushed on the back foot as two Afghanistan players ran riot. Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi strangled Punjab as they shared three wickets among themselves.
While Rashid dismissed David Miller and Wriddhiman Saha, Nabi picked up his first IPL wicket by dismissing Eoin Morgan. But water was poured over Rashid’s effort somewhat when Manan Vohra chose him to start his fight back. Vohra smashed 21 runs off the 16th over bowled by the Afghan.
But the real star with the ball for Hyderabad was Bhuvneshar Kumar who picked up five wickets for 19 runs from his four overs.
Earlier, Hyderabad managed only 159 for the loss of six wickets despite an unbeaten 70 from their captain David Warner. Though he played an uncharacteristic innings, scoring those runs off 54 balls, he managed to block one end as wickets kept falling at the other.
Hyderabad were reduced to 50 for three after losing Shikhar Dhawan, Moises Henriques and Yuvraj Singh. It was a 60-run stand between Naman Ojha and Warner that took them towards the total that they set.
The SRH lower order did not show much spine as Warner kept scoring the crucial runs. In the end, only 47 runs were added in the last five overs.
For Punjab, Mohit Sharma and Axar Patel picked up two wickets each while KC Cariappa and Sandeep Sharma picked up a wicket each.
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