Sunrisers Hyderabad once again proved their exceptional bowling as they defeated the Royal Challengers Bangalore by 5 runs in the 39th match of IPL 2018. SRH skipper Kane Williamson won the ‘Man of the Match’ for his knock of 56 runs off 39 deliveries.
Virat Kohli called the right side of the coin this as RCB won the toss and opted to field first. They made two changes to their playing XI as Manan Vohra came back in place of M Ashwin while Moeen Ali made his IPL debut and Brendon McCullum had to sit out. Sunrisers Hyderabad played with an unchanged team.
SRH didn’t start well with the bat as they lost both their openers, Dhawan(13) and Hales (5) inside the powerplay. Soon, Manish Pandey also departed for 5 before captain Williamson and Shakib Al Hasan indulged in a partnership of 64 runs. They helped SRH to post a decent total of 146/10 on the board at the end of their 20 overs.
RCB bowlers bowled brilliantly in the death overs to restrict them for such total. Mohammed Siraj and Tim Southee were the main destroyers with the bowling figures of 4-0-25-3 and 4-0-30-3 respectively.
RCB opened their batting with Manan Vohra and Parthiv Patel where the latter provided them with a great start with his knock of 20 runs which included 4 fours. Virat Kohli also played a knock of 39(30) at number 3 before his team lost too many wickets in the middle.
Mandeep Singh (21*) and Colin de Grandhomme (33) did engage in a 50+ partnership where they took the match till the very last over but could not help their team win as SRH did some sensational death bowling. All SRH bowlers took at least one wicket with brilliant economy rate.
With this win, SRH didn’t only almost qualify for the playoffs of this year’s IPL but have also become a team to finish in the top 2 at the Points Table. While on the other hand, the campaign has almost ended for RCB as even if they win remaining all their matches, they will finish with 14 points which won’t be enough for the qualification.