Lucknow Super Giants: Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) consultant Adam Voges admitted that the difference in the powerplay between the two sides was a big factor in the result of the match, and praised the Sunrisers Hyderabad openers for their “incredible batting”.
SRH stormed through to a 10-wicket victory over LSG, courtesy of an explosive batting show from opening duo Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma. Head 89 off 30 and Abhishek Sharma 75 off 28 joined hands together yet again as SRH thrashed LSG by 10 wickets in an epic run chase of 166 which didn’t last even an hour.
In the process, SRH scripted a new T20 record for chasing the most number of runs in the first 10 overs of a match. LSG batting first scored 165 runs and managed to score only 27 runs in the PowerPlay, whereas SRH opening duo in reply scored a massive 107 runs under six overs.
“I think we’re all in awe of what we’ve just seen. Sometimes you got to tip your hat and say well played to the opposition. (They) might have mis-hit one or two balls in the nine and bit overs that we bowled at them. Incredible batting, incredible hitting, clearly we didn’t have an answer for,” said Voges in the post-match presentation.
“I haven’t spoken to the guys yet whether there was a difference in terms of the innings but clearly our powerplay compared to the Sunrisers was at the two extremes.
“What do you say, 2 for 20 odd as opposed to 100 for none, and that’s the game in itself. We were put under immense pressure with the ball right from the start, we weren’t able to apply the same pressure with the bat to begin with.
“I thought the backend of our innings was really good, Ayush Badoni and Nicholas Pooran partnership got us to…it was probably still an under par total but gave us a fighting chance at least. But that obviously was clearly not enough. We thought we at least had a total to be able to defend, We probably thought we still were a little bit short but clearly we could have got 250 and I don’t think that would have been enough.” Voges said.
The stunning win boosted SRH’s Net Run Rate (NRR) from -0.065 to 0.41 with an early finish. Pat Cummins-led side are moved to No. 3 in the points table with 14 points in 12 matches.
LSG, currently sixth, need to win their last two matches and hope other results go their way if they are to qualify for the playoffs.
Lucknow will face Delhi Capitals in New Delhi on May 14 and then Mumbai Indians, who are out of the race to Playoffs, at the Wankhede Stadium on May 17 in their final league game.