The last league match of 13th edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL) turned out to be an absolutely one-sided match, where SRH won by 10 wickets with 17 balls to spare. SRH needed to defeat MI to secure their playoffs seat and they did this job with utmost efficiency as they nearly crushed the top performers of this IPL season. As SRH won and stole KKR seat for the playoffs, let’s just look at some of the talking points of the match.
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Shaky MI startEven though the hitman- Rohit Sharma stepped again on the field after recovering from his injury, he could not put up the show with the bat. Opening with Quinton de Kock, he departed in the third over, scoring just 4 runs off seven balls. de Kock, too, departed after some time and managed to put just 25 runs with the bat.
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Middle overs and Pollard’s knockSuryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan, the middle-order batsman also contributed a bleak contribution and individually they just managed to hit 30 plus runs. It was then Kieron Pollard, the go-to man for MI, smashed 41 runs off 25 balls and hit four sixes and two fours. It was only his performance that saved MI face and drove them to a total of 149 runs.
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SRH ball magicSRH bowlers nearly overpowered MI batsman. Sandeep Sharma (ER-8.5), Jason Holder (ER- 6.2), Shahbaz Nadeem (ER-4.8) came out to be absolutely economical and together they scalped seven MI wickets.
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Dazzling DavidThink of consistency, think of David Warner. David Warner, SRH skipper and the key run-scorer for SRH, displayed his dine batting innings once again. He proved himself in the most crucial match that was to decide their further stay in the tournament. In his innings, he scored 85 runs off just 58 balls. He got excellent support from Wriddhiman Saha from the other end.
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Scintillating SahaHad SRH roped in Saha early in the tournament, the tensed situation for the franchisee would not have even mounted up in this tournament. Opening with skipper David Warner, the wicketkeeper-batsman consolidated well and hit 58 runs off 45 balls. He featured in four matches for SRH this season and aggregated 214 runs with his bat.
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MI bowlersMI would have surely missed Jasprit Bumrah and Trent Boult, who was rested for the playoffs ahead. In their absence, MI nearly collapsed and the entire bowling unit couldn’t even scalp a single wicket.
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