Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) bowlers put up an incredible performance to ruin Virat Kohli’s fairytale season beating Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) by 8 runs in a high-octane summit clash walking away with their maiden Indian Premier League (IPL) trophy, in Bengaluru on 29 May.
In a battle between IPL’s best batting and bowling line-ups, the Orange Army came up trumps despite initial blitzkrieg from Chris Gayle and Kohli, defending their total of 208 for seven by restricting the home team to 200 for seven.
It was David Warner’s batting and astute captaincy complemented by some inspirational death overs bowling by Mustafizur Rahaman (1/37 in 4 overs) and Bhuvneshwar Kumar (0/25 in 4 overs) that clinched the issue.
Warner, who hit 68, finished second in run-getters’ list with 848 runs.
The turning point certainly would be the 24 runs that Ben Cutting (39 no and 2/35) got in the final over off Shane Watson’s bowling during Sunrisers innings and then came back to dismiss a rampaging Gayle.
With 18 needed off last over, Bhuvneshwar, who bowled 13 dot balls gave only 9 runs. As the last ball was delivered, skipper Warner’s joy knew no bounds with the entire team and dug-out joining him in wild celebrations.
Gayle (76 off 38 balls) and skipper Kohli (54 off 35 balls) had a scintillating opening stand of 114 in 10.3 overs as it looked like a cakewalk for the home team.
But in the end, Kohli was the tragic hero once again after the WorldT20 in a tournament that will be remembered for his exploits.
He finished the tournament with an astounding 973 runs at an average of 81.08 and and equally impressive strike-rate of 152.03. He hit an unbelievable four hundreds and seven half-centuries, not to forget 83 boundaries and a staggering 38 sixes.
Gayle’s 76 off 38 balls had four boundaries and eight sixes.
By the time he was out, Kohli was already in his zone picking up boundaries at will. The 50 came off 32 balls with a six off Sran. But immediately after that Sran hit one back of the length and Kohli gave him the charge only to get an inside edge that saw the leg-bail being clipped.
Earlier, skipper David Warner blasted his way to a 38-ball-69 as unheralded Ben Cutting’s incredible hitting enabled Sunrisers Hyderabad get to a competitive 208 for seven against Royal Challengers Bangalore in the final of the Indian Premier League cricket tournament, here tonight.
This is the highest ever score by a team batting first in an IPL final.
It was little-known Cutting who smashed 39 off 15 balls with three boundaries and four sixes to take the Sunrisers past 200-run mark. The last three overs produced 52 runs while Shane Watson (0/61 in 4 overs) went for 24 in his final over out of which Cutting scored 23.
Warner once again led from the front with another sizzling knock but the likes of Yuvraj Singh (38, 23 balls), Shikhar Dhawan (28, 25 balls) frittered away promising starts before Ben provided the ‘Cutting Edge’ with some lusty late hitting.
For RCB, Sreenath Aravind (2/30 in 4 overs), Chris Jordan (3/45 in 4 overs) were the main wicket-takers.
