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IPL 2025: Kishan, Sunrisers Hyderabad quicks dent Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s chances of a top-two finish
Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) proved to be the banana peel they were feared to be for Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), who still remained one point behind the table leaders Gujarat Titans with Punjab Kings (PBKS) now breathing down their necks with one game in hand.
Ishan Kishan, who had fizzled out after his century in the first match with just 125 runs off 117 in ten innings since then, anchored a hyper-aggressive SRH to 231. He was as efficient an anchor could be: scoring an unbeaten 94 off 48, including 54 out of the last 86 runs SRH made as he ran out of hitting partners.
Led by Phil Salt, RCB stayed abreast with the asking rate for 14 overs, but then endured a collapse of 7 for 16 to lose by 42 runs, a net-run-rate blow that could dent their chances of ending in the top two. They have fallen below PBKS’ net run rate, who are level with them on points.
The pitch looked tricky to everyone, but within one over of batting there, Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma decided this was perhaps the best pitch they had batted on all year. They decided they needed 230-240 and went looking accordingly. Abhishek started the charge with 34 off 17, hitting three sixes and perishing trying to hit a fourth. Head was slightly slower in his 17 off ten, and was outdone by a Bhuvneshwar Kumar knuckle ball.
Two wickets down in the powerplay, SRH saw no reason to slow down. Heinrich Klassen got a couple of gifts from Suyash Sharma and smacked 24 off 13 before mis-hitting a third gift. Aniket Verma made all this look pedestrian as he hit sixes off even good balls in his nine-ball 26.
The only problem was, none of them could carry on, leaving SRH at 145 for 4 in the 12th over.
He looked sedentary in comparison but Kishan was 40 off 22 when Aniket got out. Especially with Nitish Kumar Reddy and Abhinav Manohar falling in quick succession to Romario Shepherd, it was on Kishan to make sure SRH had a finishing kick.
Kishan took charge, faced 12 balls out of 18 in his seventh-wicket stand of 43 with Pat Cummins, and ended up one hit short of another century. The hitting was clean but he had to dial down the risk a little. He did play a ramp in between.
Aware of the behaviour of the pitch, SRH looked to go into the pitch and run their fingers on the ball often. RCB, though, showed why they were so close to the top of the table. Each of the first 14 overs featured at least one boundary. Virat Kohli started the charge with 43 off 25, Salt took over spectacularly with 62 off 32, and SRH were just hanging in.
Reddy hasn’t had the best season with the bat, was untidy in the field, but then started the turnaround with the wicket of Mayank Agarwal in the 11th over. Cummins came back with the wicket of Salt, but RCB stand-in captain Jitesh Sharma hit a six first ball, and Rajat Patidar looked in decent touch. Even with those two wickets falling, RCB kept the asking rate under two runs a ball.
Reddy came back to bowl the first over without a boundary in the 15th, and then Eshan Malinga delivered the big blows. Banging the ball in in the first half had probably aided a bit of reverse. He kept nailing the yorkers, changing up with the odd slower ball. He ran out Patidar, drew a return catch from Shepherd, and handcuffed the injured Tim David, who seemed to have done his hamstring when fielding.
The dramatic slide continued to the end of the innings.
Brief scores:
Sunrisers Hyderabad 231 for 6 in 20 overs (Ishan Kishan 94*, Abhishek Sharma 34, Travis Head 17, Heinrich Klassen 24, Aniket Verma 26, Abhinav Manohar 12, Pat Cummins 13*; Bhuvenshwar Kumar 1-43, Lungi Ngidi 1-51, Suyash Sharma 1-45, Krunal Pandya 1-38, Romairo Shepherd 2-14, Krunal 1-38) beat Royal Challengers Bengaluru 189 in 19.5 overs (Phil Salt 62, Virat Kohli 43, Mayank Agrawal 11, Rajat Patidar 18, Jitesh Sharma 24; Pat Cummins 3-28, Jaydev Unadkat 1-41, Eshan Malinga 2-37, Harsh Dubev 1-20, Nitish Kumar Reddy 1-13) by 42 runs
[Cricinfo]
Sri Lanka took a shade under 15 minutes to wrap up the Bamgladesh innings on the third morning in Galle, and then made a brisk start in running down the visitors’ total of 495. Sri Lanka did that by keeping a run rate of touch under four.
Pathum Nissanka (46) and Dinesh Chandimal (22) had put on unbeaten stand of 53 by the lunch break, while the deficit had been trimmed down to 395. The only blip for the hosts was the loss of Lahiru Udara for a 34-ball 29, after he had chipped a leading edge back to Taijul Islam. The 31-year-old had impressed on his debut up until that point, scoring six boundaries in his brief stay.
Sri Lanka set the tone for their innings from the off, with neither pacer safe in the early exchanges. Both Hasan Mahmud and express Nahid Rana – his pace was consistently in the low to mid 140s – being punished for any errors in line and length. Udara’s drives on the up were a particular highlight, and he will be kicking himself at not making more of this opportunity.
Nissanka, who had taken a back seat during the early exchanges, became more proactive following Udara’s dismissal, though Bangladesh will feel like they gave a few too many loose deliveries.
For instance, Nissanka’s three boundaries off Taijul all came against ones that had been dropped shorter. It served as a pressure release valve, one Sri Lanka would have been grateful for with Taijul otherwise doing well in varying his pace on a surface that had begun to show starting signs of assistance for spin.
The six-foot off spinner Nayeem Hasan, meanwhile, was the most expensive of the bowlers going for 16 in his three overs, though his extra height – and the bounce he derived from that – had caused some issues to the batters.
Off just his third delivery he got one to spit back past Nissanka’s inside edge on to his back pad, and then later on had Chandimal edging a drive past slip. But chances like that were few and far between, as Sri Lanka’s batters had it mostly their own way.
Earlier in the day, Asitha had got Rana to glove a loose ball down leg side as Bangladesh’s innings was brought to a swift close. The visitors had added 11 runs to their overnight total. Asitha finished with innings best figures of 4 for 86.
Brief scores: Day 3 Lunch
Sri Lanka 100 for 1 (Pathum Nissanka 46*, Lahiru Udra 29, Dinesh Chandimal 22*, Taijul Islam 1-34) trail Bangladesh 495 in 153.4 overs (Monimul Haque 29, Mushfiqur Rahim 163, Najmul Hossain Shanto 148, Litton Das 90, Asitha Fernando 4-86, Milan Rathnayake 3-39, Tharindu Rathnayake 3-196) by 395 runs
[Cricinfo]
Mushfiqu Rahim, Najmul Hossain Shanto and Litton Das scored 401 runs among them, but the complexion of the game changed after a two-hour rain interruption as Sri Lanka came roaring back late in the day, to leave Bangladesh on 484 for 9 at stumps of day two in Galle.
It meant the 20.4 overs bowled in the final session saw five wickets fall for 61 runs, and resulted in a dramatic Bangladesh collapse following two mammoth back-to-back stands – 264 and 149 – between Shanto and Mushfiqur, and then Mushfiqur and Litton.
Brief scores:
Bangladesh 484 for 9 in 151 overs (Monimul Haque 29, Najmul Hossain Shanto 148, Mushfiqur Rahim 163, Litton Das 90, Milan Rathnayake 3-38, Asitha Fernando 3-30, Tharindu Rathnayake 3-196) vs Sri Lanka
[Cricinfo]
Airbus has struck a deal with Vietnamese budget airline Vietjet for up to 150 single-aisle jets at the Paris Air Show as the aviation industry’s hopes to return to a tariff-free trade agreement were given a boost by United States Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
The French plane maker announced the deal on Tuesday.
Airbus is the main supplier of jets to Vietnam, accounting for 86 percent of the planes currently operated by Vietnamese airlines. The export-dependent Southeast Asian country is under pressure from Washington to buy more US goods.
Vietjet Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao said the scale of the airline’s orders was backed by plans to develop a major aviation hub in Vietnam, which Airbus says has seen its aviation market grow by 7.5 percent a year.
A deal for 150 A321neos could be worth around $9.4bn, according to estimated prices provided by Cirium Ascend.
The agreement was the latest in a flurry of business announced by Airbus at the world’s biggest aviation trade fair in Paris, France.
Airbus has made gains against its chief competitor Boeing as airlines reconsider purchases of the US-made jets amid ongoing tariff threats in recent months. In May, budget airline Ryanair threatened to pull orders of Boeing aircraft amid tariff threats.
Duffy said he wanted civil aviation to return to a 1979 zero-tariff trade agreement, in one of the clearest signs yet that the administration of US President Donald Trump might favour such a move. However, Duffy added that while the White House was aware that the US is a net exporter in aerospace, it was also dealing with a complex tariff situation.
“Now, again, you look at what free trade has done for aviation. It’s been remarkable for them. It’s a great space of net exporters,” Duffy said. “And so the White House understands that, but if you go over there and you see the moving parts of what they’re dealing with, it is pretty intense and it’s a lot.”
Trump’s sweeping 10 percent import tariffs are a headache for an industry already battling supply chain challenges and facing fresh turbulence from last week’s deadly Air India crash and conflict in the Middle East.
In early May, the US Commerce Department launched a “Section 232” national security investigation into imports of commercial aircraft, jet engines and parts that could form the basis for even higher tariffs on such imports.
Airlines, plane makers and several US trading partners have been lobbying Trump to restore the tariff-free regime under the 1979 agreement.
Boeing was having a subdued show and parking announcements while focusing on the probe into last week’s fatal crash of an Air India Boeing 787 and after it racked up huge deals during Trump’s recent tour of the Middle East.
Attention turned to another big Airbus customer, AirAsia, long associated with buzzy show finales and looking at buying 100 A220s, with Brazil’s Embraer seeking to wrest away the deal after losing a key contest in Poland, delegates said. Airbus was also expected to reveal Egyptair as the airline behind a recent unidentified order for six more A350s.
Even so, Airbus’s hopes of using the event as a showcase for its first significant deal with Royal Air Maroc faded after the airline postponed plans to announce a larger Boeing deal, delegates said.
[Aljazeera]
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