Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach Brian Lara slammed his team’s batters after they could not chase down 172 runs against Kolkata Knight Riders while playing at home at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium, Hyderabad on Thursday.
The hosts found themselves behind the eighth ball as they found themselves at 54-4 after 6.2 overs with their top order once again failing to deliver. Subsequently, Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klaasen added 70 runs for the fifth wicket but the former could not up the ante as he scored 41 runs from 40 balls.
The SRH skipper failed to rotate the strike at regular intervals and also could not find regular boundaries and thus the required run rate kept soaring high.
In fact, SRH was in a comfortable position as they required 38 runs off 30 balls but their batters could get the job done. Nine runs were needed off the final over but Varun Chakravarthy bowled a terrific over as he conceded only three runs.
The West Indies legend added that losing early wickets in the powerplay overs set them on the back foot.
Brian Lara said in the post-match press conference, “We keep losing a couple of wickets in the powerplay. That always sets you back a bit. We asked [Heinrich] Klaasen, who has been batting tremendously for us, to do all the hardwork again. He’s coming in at No.6 and we’ve got five quality players before him.
“It’s always been a task, I wouldn’t say uphill. Obviously, the batters will know that the responsibility of winning the game on such a good batting track lay in their hands and we were unable to do it.
“I just believe that we have to place a little more importance on partnerships and understanding a little bit of match awareness. It’s all great to be aggressive and have all the intent. But you got to use a little bit of upstairs to get the job done.”
Lara feels they lost wickets at the crucial stage of the match and played down concerns regarding batters’ woes against the spinners.
“Markram and Klaasen did put on a good partnership, we got ourselves right back in the game with a couple of big overs and lost a couple of wickets at a very crucial stage of the match.” Lara added.
“I wouldn’t say it’s a weakness against spin or anything like that. I just believe that we had a game to win. We have to hold our hands up and say they didn’t beat us, we lost the game.”
The former left-hander also shed light on Harry Brook’s form. The England batter was dismissed without troubling the scorers and Lara feels the right-hander will have to work on his batting to make a strong comeback.
“Harry works very hard in the nets. He hits a lot of balls, he looks in good shape in the nets. When you look at him batting and preparing for the match, he looks in pretty good shape. Harry will have to work out what’s going wrong.
“I’m always here with an ear to listen to or give advice anytime needed. We also have a batting coach in Hemang [Badani] as well. So we’ve got the ingredients to work with any of the players. Hopefully, if Harry improves it will be a great benefit for the team.”
Sunrisers Hyderabad will next take on Rajasthan Royals on Sunday at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium, Jaipur.
