In a roller-coaster encounter, Lucknow Super Giants captain Rishabh Pant played a calculated 68-run inning to help them win their first game of the season against Sunrisers Hyderabad, overshadowing Heinrich Klaasen and Nitish Kumar Reddy’s partnership.
SRH continued to play catch-up in the game after a stunning burst of Mohammed Shami’s new ball bowling, supported by other bowlers, which reduced the hosts to 35/4 after the first 10 overs at the Rajiv Gandhi International stadium in Hyderabad.
Comeback men Shami-Pant soar
Mohammed Shami silenced the Hyderabad crowd with his masterfully planned new ball burst when he gave the famed SRH top order nothing to drive, and mixed up his hard-length seam-up deliveries with clever slower ones. He started with in-swinging deliveries into Travis Head, giving him no room whatsoever. The Aussie managed to sneak a single off the fourth ball, and Shami cleverly floated one up outside the off-stump to Abhishek Sharma off the final delivery. Sharma tried to hit the ball as hard as he could, but only managed to get the edge, which flew straight to short third man Manimaran Siddharth.
In the following over from Shami, it was Head, who got bamboozled by the 35-year-old’s slower delivery into the surface. Head was shaping to cut the ball through the off-side and was beaten all ends up as he ended up giving a simple catch to Aiden Markram inside the ring. While Shami was doing his thing from one end, Prince Yadav, who picked up a three-fer in the previous game, bowled a gem of a delivery to Ishan Kishan as the ball pitched outside the off-stump and moved subtly in after pitching to disturb the timber, and SRH were reduced to 22-3 after the powerplay.