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IPL 2025: Archer, Sandeep and batters’ fire to hand Punjab Kings first loss
Yashaswi Jaiswal scoring runs. Jofra Archer continuing the rhythm he seemed to rediscover against Chennai Super Kings (CSK). Maheesh Theekshana and Wanidu Hasaranga coming into their own.
All these things may have been on Rajasthan Royals’ (RR) wishlist coming into Saturday night’s match against Punjab Kings (PBKS). All three wishes were fulfilled, as RR consigned PBKS, playing their first home game of IPL 2025, to their first defeat of the season.
Jaiswal and Riyan Parag provided the sparks at the start and finish for RR to become the first team to post a 200-plus IPL total in Mullanpur. With this only being the sixth IPL game at the venue, it wasn’t yet clear if 205 was a winning total, but only until Archer made his entrance.
Six legal balls into their chase, PBKS were two down, with Archer finding movement at upwards of 145kph to take out Priyansh and Shreyas Iyer. RR struck two more blows in the first seven overs, and PBKS were always playing catch-up thereafter, even when Nehal Wadhera and Glenn Maxwell added 88 for the fifth wicket.
Theekshana and Hasaranga did their bit to stifle the partnership’s scoring rate, and then struck one after the other to remove both set batters. And that was that for PBKS; they only hit one boundary in the last 5.4 overs as RR wrapped up victory by 50 runs.
Jaiswal got off to a scratchy start, slashing and missing against the left-left new-ball pair of Arshdeep Singh and Marco Jansen, who both found early swing, miscuing a pull just beyond the reach of a backtracking mid-on, and scoring just 12 off his first 14 balls.
But perhaps all he needed, after starting his season with scores of 1, 29 and 4, was a bit of time in the middle and a bit of luck. The fourth over brought him back-to-back sixes off Jansen – a ramp over the keeper and a slog over midwicket – and he seemed to be up and running.
Sanju Samson, captaining RR for the first time this season after a finger injury had restricted him to a batting-only Impact Player role thus far, began more fluently but had less of the strike early on. When RR ended their first wicketless powerplay of the season on 53 for 0, he was on 20 off 14 and Jaiswal on 32 off 22.
From 40 for 0 after four overs, RR only scored 45 in their next six. The legspin of RR old boy Yuzvendra Chahal and the slower cutters of Lockie Ferguson and Marcus Stoinis had a lot to do with this, on a pitch that was just a touch grippy and two-paced.
Samson fell in the 11th over, trying to force the pace against Ferguson, and Jaiswal seemed to be getting stuck. But from 46 off 39, he found that elusive higher gear, crunching Chahal down the ground to bring up his fifty before slog-sweeping his next ball for six. He hit Stoinis for a six and a four in the next over – the 13th – before becoming Ferguson’s second victim, swinging too early at a well-disguised, stump-bound knuckleball.
Parag, batting at No. 3, began much like Jaiswal had done, struggling initially to get to grips with the surface. At one stage, after four successive dots against Arshdeep’s cutter, angling across the right-hander and turning further away, Parag was on 12 off 14 in the 16th over.
Then he paused for breath, and took strike transformed, a batter able to hold his shape for a split-second longer. He hit the next two balls from Arshdeep for fours, and that began a hitting spree that brought him 31 off his last 11 balls at the crease. With Nitish Rana, Shimron Hetmyer and Dhruv Jurel contributing cameos as well, RR rushed past 200 in the final over. Stoinis, whose first two only went for 12, leaked 36 in his last two, which again told the tale of RR’s batters coming to grips with the conditions and finding a way to master them.
The first ball Archer bowled could not have been bettered. Perfect length, rooting Impact Sub Priyanash Arya to the crease. Movement from leg to off, at 144.6kph. The left-handed Arya defended down the wrong line and the ball slid past his outside edge to flick the top of off.
None of this seemed to make any impact on Shreyas Iyer, though. The PBKS captain began in a manner befitting someone whose head coach had likened his previous innings to a purring Rolls Royce, stroking Archer for two fours through the covers in his first four legal balls at the crease. Then he got greedy, exposing all his stumps to try and make room for another off-side hit, and Archer burst a 148.6kph ball through him.
Wickets kept falling even when Archer didn’t have the ball. Stoinis popped a return catch to Sandeep Sharma off a fairly innocuous seam-up delivery in the fourth over, and Prabhsimran Singh slog-swept Kumar Kartikeya to deep midwicket in the seventh. The required rate kept mounting too; PBKS needed 163 from 82 balls when Maxwell joined Wadhera.
PBKS’ hopes began to stir when both batters hit sixes off Kartikeya in a 19-run 10th over, but Theekshana and Hasaranga immediately got to work, conceding just five and 12 – the latter an impressive recovery after Wadhera slog-swept the first ball of the over for six – in the 11th and 12th overs.
But as Maxwell ramped and reverse-swatted Yudhvir Singh for a pair of fours in the 13th, Wadhera launched Hasaranga for a straight six to bring up a 33-ball fifty in the 14th, and then began the 15th with back-to-back fours off Theekshana, PBKS began to dream once again.
Then the two Sri Lankan spinners brought their defensive skills to the fore again, asking the batters to try and fetch balls dangled wide of their hitting arcs. Maxwell sliced a catch to long-off at the end of the 15th over, and Wadhera slog-swept to deep midwicket at the start of the 16th. PBKS were six down and needed 75 off 29. It was never going to happen as they continued to lose wickets.
Brief scores:
Rajasthan Royals 205 for 4 in 20 overs (Yashaswi Jaiswal 67, Riyan Parag 43*, Sanju Samson 38, Nitish Rana 12, Shimron Hetmyer 20, Dhruv Jurel 13*;Lockie Ferguson 2-37, Arshdeep Singh 1-35, Marco Jansen 1-45) beat Punjab Kings 155 for 9 in 20 overs (Prabhsimran Singh 17, Shreyas Iyer 10, Nehal Wadhera 62, Glenn Maxwell 30, Shashnak Singh 10*; Jofra Archer 3-25, Sandeep Sharma 2-21, Maheesh Theekshana 2-26, Kumar Kartikeya 1-21, Wanidu Hasaranga 1-36) by 50 runs
[Cricinfo]
Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) suffered another batting malfunction, this time on a slow, black-soil surface at home, crashing to their fourth successive defeat in IPL 2025. Having lost Travishek in the powerplay, SRH waited until the 13th over to see the first six of the innings, and managed only one more after that Mohammad Siraj caused irreparable damage right from the start, ending with his career-best IPL figures of 4 for 17.
Pat Cummins’ cameo (22* off nine balls) and then his dismissal of Jos Buttler for a duck in Gujarat Titans’ (GT) chase of 153 gave SRH some hope, but that faded away once Washington Sundar clattered 23 off nine balls in the powerplay. Earlier in the day, GT didn’t need Washington with the ball, but his attacking enterprise at No. 4 settled their chase on a slow pitch. Washington fell agonisingly short of a maiden IPL half-century, but his captain Shubman Gill ushered GT home, with an unbeaten 61 off 43 balls, along with Sherfane Rutherford.
Siraj had sparked the Border-Gavaskar Trophy to life when he gave Travis Head a send-off in Adelaide last December. Four months on, Siraj was bowling to Head for the first time in T20s, and the battle lasted just five balls. After Head scored two fours off Siraj, the fast bowler struck with his trademark wobble-seam delivery, having him chip a catch to midwicket for 8.
Abhishek Sharma hit four fours before Siraj had him miscuing a catch to mid-on in his third over of the powerplay. It was Siraj’s 100th wicket in the IPL and sixth in the powerplay, the most by a bowler in that phase so far this season, with an economy rate of 6.27.
Siraj then returned in the death to york both Aniket Verma, the last recognised batter for SRH, and Simarjeet Singh, their Impact Player.
With both Head and Abhishek gone early,Rashid Khan, who was coming into this game on the back of figures of 4-0-54-0, could afford to ease himself in. He started fairly well by giving away just 10 runs in his first two overs, but when he erred in length, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Heinrich Klassen dispatched him to the fence. Rashid finished with 4-0-31-0, going wicketless for a third successive game, and with tournament figures of 1 for 143 in 14 overs at an economy rate of 10.21
Left-arm fingerspinner Ravisrinivasan Sai Kishore, on the other hand, showed remarkable control over his length and variations. He claimed the big wicket of Klaasen by knocking him over with a quick dart, which skidded off the pitch, for 27 off 19 balls. Sai Kishore also had Reddy holing out for 31 off 34 balls and finished with 4-0-24-2.
That SRH passed 150 was down to Cummins’ late blows. He was the only SRH batter in the top eight to have a strike rate of over 160.
It appeared like GT had handed a franchise debut to Washington to primarily match his offspin up with SRH’s left-hander heavy top order. But with Siraj dominating the powerplay and Sai Kishore taking care of the middle overs, GT ended up not using his offspin.
Washington then walked out to bat at No. 4 after his childhood friend B Sai Sudarshan and Buttler fell cheaply in successive overs. Washington took advantage of the last over of the powerplay, smoking Simarjeet for two sixes and two fours. It provided a throwback to Washington of 2016, when he opened the batting, alongside Abhinav Mukund, in the TNPL and showed the intent to hit over the top. Just like that, Washington dumped SRH’s Impact Player out of the attack.
Washington continued to attack even after that. When the ambidextrous Kamindu Mendis darted one on the stumps with his right hand, Washington manufactured swinging room and laced him over extra-cover for four. Washington seemed set for a fifty until he holed out one shy of the landmark in the 14th over.
Gill, who had already crossed 50 by that point, finished the job along with Rutherford, who hit an unbeaten 35 off 16 balls.
Brief scores:
Gujarat Titans 153 for 3 in 16.4 overs (Shubman Gill 61*, Washington Sundar 49, Sherfaine Rutherford 35*; Mohammed Shami 2-28, Pat Cumminss 1-26) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 152 for 8 in 20 overs (Abhishek Sharma 18, Ishan Krishan 17, Nitish Kumar Reddy 31, Heinrich Klassen 27, Aniket Verma 18,Pat Cummins 22*; Mohammed Siraj 4-17, Ravisrinivasan Sai Kishore 2-24, Prasidh Krishna 2-25)by seven wickets
[Cricinfo]
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The sun will be directly overhead Colombo, Awissawella, Talawakelle, Dimbula, Galakumbura and Dambagalla at about 12:12 noon today [07]
On the apparent northward relative motion of the sun, it is going to be directly over the latitudes of Sri Lanka during 05th to 14th of April in this year.
The nearest areas of Sri Lanka over which the sun is overhead today (07th) are Colombo, Awissawella, Talawakelle, Dimbula, Galakumbura and Dambagalla at about 12:12 noon.
Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi departed today (06) from Air Force Base Anuradhapura concluding his State visit to Sri Lanka. The Indian Premier embarked on a tour to Sri Lanka at the invitation from President Anura Kumara Disanayake.
This visit underscores the enduring relationship encapsulated by the theme “Friendship of Centuries, Commitment to a Prosperous Future,” further solidifying the bonds between India and Sri Lanka.
This marks Prime Minister Modi’s fourth visit to Sri Lanka, which has further enhanced the economic, cultural, and historical relations between the two nations, while also reinforcing their multifaceted partnership. This visit by the Indian Prime Minister reinforces Sri Lanka’s important role in India’s “Neighbourhood First Policy” and ‘MAHASAGAR’ vision concerning diplomatic relations.
This state visit is anticipated to yield significant results on various collaborative initiatives, fostering a path towards mutual growth and development. The citizens of Sri Lanka will soon be able to witness the fruitful outcomes of these partnerships, and Indian Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s visit will mark a significant milestone in the government’s pursuit of sustainable development focused on the needs of the people.
Accompanying Indian Prime Minister Modi were Indian External Affairs Minister Dr. S. Jaishankar, National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri and a delegation of senior officials from the Indian government.
[PMD]
IPL 2025: Siraj, Gill and Washington hand Sunrisers fourth successive defeat
The sun will be directly overhead Colombo, Awissawella, Talawakelle, Dimbula, Galakumbura and Dambagalla at about 12:12 noon today [07]
Heavy rainfall of above 100 mm is likely at some places in Western, Sabaragamuwa, Central, Southern, Uva and North-central provinces and in Ampara district
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