For the second match in a row, Abhishek and Travis Head made a measured start. They followed up their 23 for 0 in three overs against Chennai Super Kings with 26 for 0 in three overs here. There seems to be recognition there that their lower middle order is not the most accomplished, and that they don’t always need 250 with their bowling line-up.

On 12 off seven at the start of the fourth over, Abhishek began to manufacture shots, starting with Lungi Ngidi and his slower balls. Having snuck a quiet Rana over in with the new ball, DC looked like they were happy with the small winnings, but then they raised the stakes by handing over the fifth over to Rana. Abhishek was 21 off 11 at this point, and in a mood to hit the next gear. He hit Rana for two successive sixes before Head got one in. All of a sudden, the powerplay read 67 for 0, still among their slower powerplays, especially when they don’t lose wickets.

The DC captain looked like he wasn’t going to get caught in match-ups arising from the direction of turn as he bowled the seventh over without a boundary but Abhishek then took his second over for 16. Even though he got lucky with Head’s wicket off a short ball, Axar didn’t bowl again.

With the wicket just gone, DC snuck in another quiet over from Rana, but Ishan Kishan and Abhishek resumed carnage against the left-arm wristspin of Kuldeep Yadav, taking 22 off the 11th over. T Natarajan and Mukesh Kumar bowled as well as they could for the next three overs, but still conceded 34. At this juncture, Rana was asked to bowl again, and Abhishek took 23 off him, bringing up his hundred with the second of the sixes in that over. Abhishek’s first T20 hundred took 59 balls; the remaining eight have all come in fewer than 50 balls. This one took 47.

At 115 at the end of the 15th over, Abhishek was a decent shout to challenge Chris Gayle’s 175, but he just couldn’t impart power into his shots even though he kept charging the bowlers. He got only 20 off the last 17 balls he faced, but the remaining 13 balls were maximised by Klaasen, who scored 37 off 13 to go with Kishan’s 25 off 13.

SRH have been keen to give Dilshan Madushanka his IPL debut but a batting collapse in the last match resulted in an extra batter as Impact Player. It didn’t take long to see why. Madushanka swung the ball in the first over, he bowled wobble-seam in the second, and was excellent with old-ball bowling outside the powerplay as well. At the start of his second over, he got rid of compatriot Pathum Nissanka with a catch at mid-off.

Rana and KL Rahul kept fighting but the game was always slipping away. The bowling from Madushanka, Hussain and Malinga kept the pressure up, and the floodgates opened around the halfway mark. Rahul was the first one to go, hitting a low full toss from Hussain straight to deep square leg. Four balls later, Malinga was on a hat-trick, having dismissed Rana and David Miller at the start of the 11th over.

Once again, Malinga found reverse swing, but cleverly he kept mixing it up with slower balls. His four-for took him to 21 wickets after the 10th over in his 14 matches since his IPL debut last year. Among fast bowlers, only Prasidh Krishna has taken more.

Left-arm spinner Harsh Dubey joined the party with three wickets in the last over, all catches in the deep.

Brief scores:
Sunriser Hyderabad 242 for 2 in 20 overs (Abhishek Sharma 135*, Travis Head 37, Ishan Kishan 25, Heinrich  Klaasen 37*; Axar Patel  1-23) beat Delhi Capitals 195 for 9 in 20 overs (KL Rahul 37, Nitish Rana 57, Sameer Rizvi 41, Tristan Stubbs 27, Ashutosh Sharma 14; Dilshan Madushanka 1-36, Eshan Malinga 4-32, Sakib Hussain 1-29, Harsh  Dubey 3-12) by 47 runs

[Cricinfo]