The Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) lost to the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by five runs at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Thursday, May 4, in another 2023 Indian Premier League (IPL) game.
In the first inning, the Orange Army gave up 171 runs. Rinku Singh and Nitish Rana played well in the middle order. During the chase, they seemed to be in charge at one point, but they lost wickets quickly and came up just short of the other team’s score.
The loss put the Sunrisers in a bad spot, and now they have to win all of their final games to make the playoffs. They will know that there is no room for error and that they need to fix every weak spot in their defenses right away.
Here are two things that SRH did wrong and one thing that they did right in their IPL 2023 game against KKR.
SRH again made a mistake with their batting order:
In IPL 2023, SRH made a lot of changes to their batting order, especially to their starting pair. Head coach Brian Lara has said that the starters will depend on how the teams match up, but they didn’t pay much attention to that on Thursday.
Harry Brook hit a century in the last game against KKR while starting the batting. Before this game, he was moved down to the middle of the batting order. He didn’t move. At that point, Abhishek Sharma and Mayank Agarwal were facing the new ball.
The match against KKR was a great chance to pair a fast hitter and a spin hitter at the top, so Brook had to open with either Abhishek or Mayank. In the power play, the Englishman could have played against Vaibhav Arora, Andre Russell, Shardul Thakur, and Harshit Rana.
Instead, the Knight Riders didn’t mind bowling fast at Abhishek and Mayank, even getting them out of the game early. Spin was saved for the middle overs and the last few overs when it was harder to play.
Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klaasen were fun to watch:
When Anukul Roy trapped Harry Brook in front in the first over after the power play, SRH had a hard job ahead of them. Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klaasen worked together at the crease, and the two of them did an excellent job of steering the ship.
Markram and Klaasen rode out the storm in a partnership based on control and efficiency until Klaasen chose to let loose with a couple of big blows. They put up 70 runs with the fifth wicket, making it hard for KKR to break the partnership and bridging the gap exactly between offense and defense.
When Klaasen was thrown out, Hyderabad was in a strong situation. The South African pair kept the asking rate steady the whole time, and their team should have been able to win by riding the wave.
Key Hyderabad hitters were out because of non-threatening balls:
The event started when Klaasen was fired. Shardul Thakur sent a harmless length ball to the hard-hitting hitter, who hit it to deep midwicket. Markram had to do most of the work because of this.
The SRH captain, however, played an even worse shot to get out. He tried to flat-bat Vaibhav Arora’s well-placed bouncer down the ground, but he was caught at long-off.
In the last over, Abdul Samad missed out on a couple of free runs from Varun Chakaravarthy. The KKR spinner tried to hit the ball into the field, but most of the time the ball was short and didn’t have much power.
Samad first hit one too long-on, and then he tried to clear the long leg-side boundary, but he punched out on the ropes. The ball was there to be hit, and the way the SRH bench reacted showed how upset they were that the young batter didn’t help with yet another chase.
Even though the Sunrisers were in charge of the chase at one point, their batters played irresponsible and badly executed shots that cost them their chances.
