Sunrisers Hyderabad stand-in captain Bhuvneshwar Kumar believes they were a lot of runs short when they posted 157 runs on the board against Punjab Kings at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai on Sunday after he won the toss and decided to bat first.
The Orange Army kept losing wickets at regular intervals, which didn’t help them in their batting innings.
Three top-order batters got off to starts but none of them could go on to convert it into a substantial score. In fact, SRH found themselves in all sorts of trouble when they were reduced to 96-5. However, Washington Sundar and Romario Shepherd were able to help SRH post a fighting score on the board.
Sundar scored 25 from 19 balls whereas Shepherd added 26 from 15 balls. But SRH lost by five wickets and with 29 balls to spare, which goes to show it was a below-par score from them.
Liam Livingstone continued his good form for Punjab Kings as he smashed 49 runs from 22 balls to help the Mohali-based franchise get over the line convincingly. Thus, Punjab Kings were able to finish their season on a high.
On the other hand, Bhuvneshwar Kumar feels the team wasn’t at their best in the second half of the tournament. SRH had won five matches in a row but soon veered off the track in the second phase.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar said in the post-match presentation, “Good feeling (on being the captain), but it would have been better if we had won the match. I think we were a lot of runs short (with them winning with 5 overs left), but we had to field better, didn’t take our chances and there were fumbles, but this was the last match of the season and that does have an effect. We won 5 on the bounce and had the momentum, but it didn’t go our way and we pretty much lost all our matches in the second half of the tournament. We will have to look at our squad and the management will have to work out on the weaknesses ahead of the next season. Have had many positives, Umran Malik and Abhishek Sharma were the obvious positives, but we have a decent core of batting with Aiden Markram and Nicholas Pooran coming up pretty well. As for me, it was a challenging season with injuries hampering me, thought I did a decent job and will look to come back better in the next season.”
SRH will look to bounce back stronger in the next season and come up with a collective effort. Players like Umran Malik, Abhishek Sharma, and Rahul Tripathi were big positives for the Orange Army but the team lacked behind in the later stages of the tournament.
