Pat Cummins-led Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) faced off against the Shreyas Iyer-led Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in Qualifier 1 of the Indian Premier League 2024 (IPL 2024) on Tuesday, May 21, at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad.
Pat Cummins chose to bat first at the toss as it is what SRH do best but in the blockbuster game the batters failed to support their captain's toss decision. The in-form opening duo of Travis Head (0) and Abhishek Sharma (3) failed to perform and SRH came under pressure.
It was Rahul Tripathi (55) who played a fighting knock to keep his team in the game. Also, Heinrich Klaasen (32) and Pat Cummins (30) provided good support to Tripathi as SRH scored 159 runs before getting bundled out.
Defending the total, Pat Cummins & Co. never looked in the game as openers - Sunil Narine (21) and Rahmanullah Gurbaz (23) - as well as the Iyer duo of Shreyas Iyer (58) and Venkatesh Iyer (51) batted exceptionally and steered KKR to an 8-wicket win inside 13.4 overs. For SRH, T Natarajan and Pat Cummins picked up one wicket each.
Speaking after the match, Pat Cummins said that they need to forget the loss quickly and move on. He also acknowledged that they failed with both and ball in the Qualifier 1. Pat Cummins said:
"Yeah we will try to put this behind quickly, good thing we will have a crack at it (second qualifier). You have those days in T20 cricket where things doesn't quite work out. We weren't where we wanted with the bat and obviously couldn't do much with the ball.
While talking about taking Sanvir Singh as an impact player in the first innings, Pat Cummins stated that they needed an extra batter after losing early wickets. He elaborated:
"Felt that extra batting was important (picking the impact sub) on this wicket. Thought KKR bowled really well, there was a little bit in it early on and the surface got better. We all have played enough cricket, and going to a new venue (Chennai) helps us as well, so we gotta keep this behind and move on."
How Pat Cummins' Sunrisers Hyderabad Finished In Top 2
Sunrisers Hyderabad emerged as the most exciting team to watch in the Indian Premier League 2024 as their batting unit, especially the trio of Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, and Heinrich Klaasen played an attacking brand of cricket and produced some extraordinary performances.
The bowling unit of the team not being able to deliver consistently put more pressure on the batters to fire and they took the responsibility well. However, playing high-risk cricket comes at a cost, and in the matches where batters failed, SRH mainly ended up on the losing side. Sunrisers Hyderabad were consistently inside the top 4 positions in the IPL 2024 throughout the competition but they weren't able to climb to the No.1 or No.2 position which were occupied by Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders.
It looked like RR and KKR would surely finish in the top 2 while the rest of the teams were fighting for the 3rd and 4th spots. As the tournament entered the last phase of the league stage, things started changing significantly as Rajasthan Royals went on a 4-match losing streak and to go with it Sunrisers Hyderabad comprehensively crushed Punjab Kings in their final league stage match and moved to the second spot with 17 points in the bag.
Rajasthan Royals, who were at 16 points, still had a great chance to finish inside the top 2 but it didn't happen as their last match against Kolkata Knight Riders was washed out, which led to them finishing at 17 points with a Net Run Rate of 0.273, which was inferior to Sunrisers Hyderabad's 0.414.
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