Sunrisers Hyderabad looked down and out while chasing 215 runs against Rajasthan Royals at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium, Jaipur on Sunday. The visitors were staring at the barrel of the gun, needing 41 runs off the last two overs.
In walked Glenn Phillips and he went 6, 6, 6, and 4 against Kuldip Yadav to give a glimmer of hope to SRH before Abdul Samad finished off the pending work. The New Zealander scored 25 runs off just seven balls as he scored one four and smoked three maximums to keep his team stay alive in the contest.
17 runs were needed off the final over but Sandeep Sharma made the mistake of overstepping on what was supposed to be the final ball of the innings. On the re-take ball, Samad smashed a six to help his team clinch the humdinger contest.
Phillips was able to hit the ground running and he had to hit every ball for a maximum to keep his team in the contest. The Kiwi batter took the attack against inexperienced Kuldip Yadav, who could not execute his plans in the second-last over.
Earlier in the match, Jos Buttler scored a fantastic knock of 95 runs whereas Sanju Samson smashed a brilliant innings of 66 runs off 38 balls. But their heroics with the bat went in vain as RR ended up on the wrong side of the result despite dominating the game for 80% of the time.
Glenn Phillips was awarded Player of the Match for his fine cameo towards the end.
He said in the post-match presentation, “It was a situation where it was going to go one of two ways. Happy to get out on top of this one. We are all here to do our job, this is what the team needed today. Fantastic for it to pay off, and I had so much fun today out there.”
Phillips was disappointed with the way he got out as he added, “That was the ball I should have hit the most, I was disappointed the actual slot ball didn’t go over the fence. I felt I left a lot out there with 17 needed off the final over, but then Samad did what he did and obviously we got that little bit of luck with the no ball.”
SRH will next face Lucknow Super Giants at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad on Saturday.
