NEWS
Follow UsIf 277 against Mumbai Indians wasn’t enough, Sunrisers Hyderabad went 10 steps (runs) ahead and amassed a total of 287 against Royal Challengers Bengaluru at the M.Chinnaswamy Stadium on April 15 (Monday). They not only posted the highest IPL total of all time but also registered the second-highest score in T20 history.
So, what next? 300? Well, Travis Head thinks so. This might sound funny and ridiculous but this is coming from a batter who smoked 102 off 41 deliveries, studded with nine fours and eight maximums. The left-hander from Australia completed his ton off just 39 deliveries - the fourth-fastest in IPL history.
"(Our total) needs a three in front of it, does it now? It's proper batting. We've wanted to be exciting the whole time and we've wanted to take the game on. Pat (Cummins) and Dan (Vettori) have put pressure on the batting line-up to make sure we try and maximise the powerplay and then keep going,” said Head, as SRH defeated RCB by 25 runs.
"We've got guys like (Heinrich) Klaasen, (Abdul) Samad and Nitish (Kumar Reddy) who didn't even get a hit today. We've got some power through the middle and we want to keep just putting the foot down as much as we can. We know that's not always guaranteed, but at the moment I think we're setting it up really well in each game and getting to the score that we need."
Bengaluru themselves slammed 262 in response. There was not a single bowler in this match who went at less than 10 runs per over. “Wish I was a batter. Wonderful game of cricket. Amazing scenes. Good fun,” said SRH captain Cummins.
“If you bowl an over of 7 or 8, you can have an impact on the game. I have given up trying to read the wicket. Chinnaswamy looked dry. Really happy. Four wins now. The batters have gone about it having a smile on their faces.”
The Royal Challengers made a couple of major changes in their line-up but it made no difference whatsoever. It made things even more worse. Mohammed Siraj and Glenn Maxwell were dropped and Lockie Ferguson was given an opportunity.
The New Zealand paceman finished with figures of 2/52, with Reece Topley, Yash Dayal and Vijaykumar Vyshak also going over 50 runs. “It's tough,” said Faf du Plessis after RCB’s sixth defeat of the season.
“We tried a few things, we tried different things. There's no way to hide when your confidence is low. The fast bowlers found it quite difficult out there. Similar to the batting perspective, we need to work on a few areas.”
It was almost an impossible run-chase but du Plessis and Virat Kohli put on 80 runs in just 6.2 overs. Once the latter perished, there were a couple of quiet overs and that pushed RCB out of the contest. Dinesh Karthik smashed 83 off 35 but it was never going to be enough.
“Much better (batting performance) from us, that was a proper T20 wicket. Just tried to get close in the end, but 280 was very far. Need to make sure the run rate doesn't go down after the powerplay. The guys put up their hands and never gave up. It was good to see the fight, 30-40 runs from the bowling perspective was a bit too much.”
