A 60-minute shower on Monday night, immediately after Delhi Capitals finished their batting at 133-7, was enough to rule SRH out of the tournament as both teams had to split points
Daniel Vettori
It was Sunrisers Hyderabad’s best performance of the season in the bowling and fielding departments, but it came a wee bit too late as heavy showers poured cold water on whatever slender hopes they had of making the Playoffs.
A 60-minute shower on Monday night, immediately after Delhi Capitals finished their batting at 133-7, was enough to rule SRH out of the tournament as both teams had to split points. Last year’s runners-up joined Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals in the list of eliminated teams. They stand eighth in the table with seven defeats and three wins besides this rain-abandoned encounter.
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Rain, a blessing for DC
However, for DC, did the rain come as a blessing in disguise. At the toss, DC skipper Axar Patel had said that even if they lose, they don’t want to lose by a big margin. But in the end, rain had the last laugh. DC collected a point and have 13 from 11 matches. Their fate hangs in the balance as they now play in-form teams like Punjab Kings, Gujarat Titans and Mumbai Indians in their last three matches.
Hard-hitting batter Ashutosh Sharma, who came in as an Impact Player and bailed out DC with a 26-ball 41, was not sure if the rain had come to their rescue or not. With a puzzled look he said: “I don’t know whether the rain helped us or not [with a wry smile]. But every point is crucial at this stage of the tournament, so we are happy we could get one point,’’ adding they thought they had put up a competitive score on the wicket. “The target was good enough.”
SRH now play for pride in their remaining matches. Coach Daniel Vettori admitted that it was a disappointing season. “We came in with high hopes, but just haven’t been consistent enough with our performances. It’s frustrating that we couldn’t finish it.”
With Mohammed Shami, who was a big let-down for SRH, being finally omitted from the playing XI, skipper Pat Cummins bowled the first over for the first time. The Australian pacer (3-19) came up with a fiery spell that rocked the DC top order.
‘Cummins was fantastic’
Vettori was happy that his skipper snapped up three wickets at the start of the innings. “Pat [Cummins] is a tremendous new ball bowler. Normally, he plays a bit of a Mr Fix-it role for us in terms of being able to jump all over the Powerplay, the middle and in the death. It was just a nice opportunity to give him the new ball and go at them. He was fantastic. You can see why he’s such a dominant Test match bowler.”
On SRH’s poor season, Vettori felt that this year the conditions [at home] weren’t as they expected. “If you look at last year there were a number of high-scoring games here and these surfaces, in particular, have been a little bit different. It has been tricky and hasn’t been easy for the batters.”
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