Sports

Jailbreak for Kings XI Punjab, choke for Sunrisers Hyderabad

Published

6 years ago

2020/10/26

The Kolkata Knight Riders thumped the Delhi Capitals earlier on Saturday to consolidate their fourth spot and establish a four-point lead over the Sunrisers Hyderabad and the Kings XI Punjab. In the Sunrisers’ previous game against the Rajasthan Royals, the middle order bailed them out after both David Warner and Jonny Bairstow fell cheaply. However, they unravelled spectacularly on Saturday as the Kings XI pulled off an unlikely heist. Here’s how it unfolded

56 for 1

In pursuit of a modest target of 127, the “old-school” Warner turns up and takes on the Kings XI’s gun bowler Mohammed Shami. The Sunrisers’ captain lofts Shami over cover for six, then flat-bats him over his head and pulls him past mid-on for fours. All up, Warner scores 22 runs off 13 balls from Shami. The Sunrisers are 52 for 0 in six overs.

Enter Ravi Bishnoi. Exit Warner. Having reverse-swept a googly for four first ball, Warner aims another reverse-sweep off the second, but Bishnoi finds more turn and bounce. The ball flicks Warner’s glove and Rahul hangs on to a catch. Paul Reiffel, the on-field umpire, though shoots down the appeal, which Rahul reviews successfully to overturn the on-field not-out decision. Warner gone for a rapid 35.

58 for 2

M Ashwin had harried Bairstow with googlies in his first two overs. Ashwin, like fellow legspinner Bishnoi, relishes bowling the googly more than the legbreak. It was the same variation that impressed Stephen Fleming and MS Dhoni so much that they shelled out INR 4.5 crore in the 2016 auction to get him on board at the Rising Pune Supergiant.

In the past couple of seasons, Ashwin has got the googly to skid off the pitch. Bairstow is ready for the googly in Ashwin’s third over. He shapes to sweep with the break through square leg. However, Ashwin gets a legbreak to drift into Bairstow and bowls him around his legs.

67 for 3

Manish Pandey is taking his time to settle as the Dubai pitch is slowing down. Abdul Samad is promoted to No.4 to perhaps target the bowlers and shorter boundaries. Or perhaps the Sunrisers just don’t want to risk Vijay Shankar, who had hurt his thumb in the field, in a small chase. Shankar had suffered back spasms earlier in the tournament as well.

Rahul searches for another breakthrough and brings back Shami. The Kings XI’s main bowler will finish his quota by the ninth over. Another batsman may have opted to see Shami off, but Samad is a six-hitter, and that’s why he has been picked ahead of Abhishek Sharma.

Shami pitches it right in the slot, but Samad doesn’t quite get underneath the length and feebly chips it to mid-off, where Chris Jordan pouches the overhead catch. The Kings XI start to believe.

100 for 4

Pandey and Shankar threaten to close out a second successive chase. They work past the early blows by dropping the ball into the gaps. Pandey, in particular, struggles to read Bishnoi’s googly and so once Jordan comes back, he looks to chance his arm. He swishes at a leg-side full-toss and misses.

Jordan then shifts his line outside off, but overpitches it. Pandey, like Samad, doesn’t quite get under it, and chips it in the air. J Suchith, the sub fielder, tears across to his right, and plucks a catch out of thin air in front of the Kings XI dugout.

In the 2017 IPL final, Suchith had ran out Washington Sundar off the last ball as a sub fielder to seal a one-run win for the Mumbai Indians. Pandey’s grab will turn out to be a match-winning fielding effort as well.

Ravi Bishnoi, Chris Jordan and Mohammed Shami – the heart of KXIP’s bowling BCCI

The Sunrisers need 27 off 23 balls.

110 for 5

All of the Sunrisers’ hopes are on Shankar. He had lined up his Tamil Nadu team-mate Ashwin and driven him straight for a brace of fours. Then, there was a languid lofted drive over mid-off for four off Jordan. After that boundary, the Sunrisers need only 20 off 18 balls. At that stage, ESPNcricinfo’s forecaster pegged Kings XI’s chances at a mere 5.47%.

Jason Holder jabs Arshdeep Singh to point and Shankar responds for the single, taking on Nicholas Pooran’s arm. Pooran misses the stumps, but Shankar cops a nasty blow on the grille of his helmet as the ball skids off the turf and bounces extra. After the Sunrisers’ medical staff tend to Shankar, he composes himself and signals that he’s ready to bat on.

Shankar wants to finish back-to-back games for the Sunrisers. He expects a short delivery and ventures leg side, hoping to manipulate the gap between backward point and short third man. Singh keeps it short, but it’s an off-pace cutter that grips and has Shankar edging behind to Rahul.

It comes down to the Sunrisers

needing 17 off 12 balls.

112 for 6

Jordan v Holder. The Kings XI’s seniors Rahul, Chris Gayle, Glenn Maxwell, and Pooran are all part of an intense discussion with Jordan. He will be bowling into Big Jase from over the wicket, with the leg-side boundary being the shorter one. Arshdeep will have the cushion of bowling of the last over, with the leg-side boundary being the bigger one.

Jordan brings him with him the reputation of being a bonafide death bowler for England, but he hasn’t quite had his IPL moment. That Super Over against the Mumbai Indians could’ve gone awry for him if not for Mayank Agarwal’s stunning save at the boundary.

Arshdeep Singh celebrates after a key strike BCCI

Agarwal is out injured now, but Jordan has a chance to stamp his authority on the IPL. His first ball is a middle-stump yorker and Holder stabs it down to long-on for one. Priyam Garg squeezes a single off the second to bring Holder back on strike. Jordan’s plan is simple: hide the ball away from Holder’s reach and deny him access to the shorter leg-side fence. Jordan executes his plan and has Holder carving a catch to Mandeep Singh at extra-cover.

Mandeep had lost his father on Friday evening, but here he is stepping up under pressure for the Kings XI.

112 for 7

The Sunrisers need 15 off nine balls. They need more magic from Rashid Khan after he had ripped out Rahul with a perfect wrong’un earlier in the evening. Jordan goes wide of off once again, and Khan only scythes it straight to Pooran at sweeper cover for a golden duck. Double-wicket penultimate over. Four years after having been yanked out of Sky Sports’ panel of IPL analysts as a late replacement for the Royal Challengers Bangalore, Jordan has his IPL moment. It’s panic stations for the Sunrisers.

114 for 8

Arshdeep has 13 to defend to pull off a coup. He has only played three first-class and 18 white-ball games for Punjab in domestic cricket. He is up against Sandeep Sharma, his senior state mate, who is Sunrisers’ swing bowler in the IPL. Sunrisers need him to swing with the bat now. Arshdeep, however, digs in an offcutter and has Sharma splicing a pull to midwicket.

114 for 9

Garg has crossed over and the Sunrisers need 13 off four balls. He’s probably wondering how it came down to this? Arshdeep digs in another cutter at off stump and dares Garg to manufacture pace for himself. However, the batsman is cramped for room and only drags it to long-on, where Jordan runs in, dives forward, and snaps up another smart catch.

114 all out

With the game up, Arshdeep gets another cutter to stick in the pitch, drawing a weak push from No.11 Khaleel Ahmed to point. Ahmed simply dawdles for the single and is emphatically beaten by a direct hit from Bishnoi. It raises his coach Anil Kumble off his seat and even has him applauding animatedly.

From having lost games from seemingly winning positions, the Kings XI pulled off a great escape to secure their fourth victory in a row, boosting their playoffs chances. As for the Sunrisers, they’re still not out yet, but how will they recover from such a cataclysmic collapse? (ESPN)

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Gujarat Titans go No.1 after Rabada and Holder rout Sunrisers Hyderabad

Published

7 hours ago

2026/05/13

Priyan

Kagiso Rabada and Mohammed Siraj gave their side a rollicking start [Cricinfo]

Kagiso Rabada and Mohommed Siraj could have been wearing their Test whites. By the end of the powerplay, they had bowled three overs each, and Sunrisers Hyderabad were reduced to 34 for 4. Somehow, they had outdone the Gujarat Titans batting line-up from the first innings – they had been reduced to 34 for 2 themselves. Wickets in hand allowed B Sai Sudarsan (61 off 44) and Washington Sundar (50 off 33) to mount a comeback for GT. On the other hand, SRH let a tricky chase of 168 slip from their grasp, folding for 86 in 14.5 overs.

At the toss, GT captain Shubman Gill said that the pitch in Ahmedabad looked like “a better wicket than we have had in the past couple of matches.” He was dismissed in the third over, off a rare mistimed swipe across the line. He had misjudged a pitch that turned out to be one of this IPL’s most treacherous ones: deliveries stuck in the surface, the new ball jagged both ways, and scoring options were hard to find square of the wicket.

An endless battery of tall GT fast bowlers – rounded out by Jason Holder and Impact Player Prasidh Krishna in the middle overs – kept striking in the chase. At the end of it, GT rose to the top of the table with 16 points.

Pat Cummins unlocked the secret to bowling on this surface early: he pushed it in on a hard length, and kept swinging the new ball away from both Sudharsan and Gill. But the first two wickets for SRH came from elsewhere. Praful Hinge found himself back in the SRH side, in place of Harsh Dubey to give them an extra pace option.

Hinge mimicked the Cummins line-and-length early on, and tempted Gill into a misjudged on-drive. In the final over of the powerplay, Jos Buttler realised he could not go big in the ‘V’, so he tried to scoop Hinge behind the wicket instead. All he managed was an edge to the keeper.

Hinge’s twin strikes consigned GT to 34 for 2, their lowest powerplay score this season.

If ever there was a pitch suited to Sudharsan’s brand of T20 batting, it was this. He kept pouncing on the deliveries that erroneously landed in the slot, and pushed the others around to turn over the strike. Nishant Sindhu, who made 22 off 14, kept him company at the other end through the middle overs. Sindhu stayed deep in his crease and played drives and cuts, both batters biding their time.

Sensing a breakthrough, Cummins brought himself back into the attack in the 10th over to bowl his third. He rifled in a delivery outside off, full but rearing off the pitch at Sindhu. He could only mistime a lofted drive to long-off.

Cummins ended with figures of 1 for 20 in the 16th. Just an over later, Sai Sudharsan – who had brought up his sixth half-century of the season – opted for another scoop off Sakib Hussain. The full delivery took off the bottom of his bat, and Hinge gobbled it up at short third.

Washington starred in the final overs of the GT innings. He jumped on top of deliveries too high for most others to cut, and sent them off to the ropes by rolling his wrists over them late. He saved his best shots for the end of the 19th over, off Eshan Malinga, who had a rare off-day and gave away 46 runs. He fell down on successive deliveries, first scooping a yorker down over short fine, then attacking a full toss by rolling his wrists, once more, for a shovel over deep square leg.

At the midway mark, GT’s total was the Schrodinger’s par score – neither quite par but also just, with Sudharsan hesitating to call it enough for their bowlers between innings. Siraj and Rabada then bowled through the powerplay for the fifth match in a row. Nineteen balls into the innings, they had dismissed Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma and Ishan Kishan.

Rabada, in particular, kept hitting the hard length close to 150kph, slanting deliveries away from the left-handers to have Kishan driving at one away from his body, Abhishek chopping one into his stumps, and No. 4 R Smaran mistiming one to Gill in covers. He finished his spell in one go, returning 3 for 28.

Holder’s entry to the GT side has given them another tall, accurate bowler to go to in the middle overs. In their previous game, against Rajasthan Royals, he had plucked out the final three wickets in the space of five balls. Here, he took 3 for 20 as he mopped up SRH’s lower order.

The wicket had worn down as the evening went on, so Holder resorted to slower balls in the back-half of the innings. First, he effectively finished the contest by taking out Heinrich Klaasen, who swiped at a ball lacking in pace over his head, to keeper Buttler running to his left. Nitish Kumar Reddy was his next victim, courtesy an edge from the extra bounce Holder kept extracting from the surface, while Shivang Kumar was the final batter to fall off a misadventurous scoop.

Our final tall bowler of the day – in the cohort of Cummins, Holder, Rabada and Siraj – also had the highest release point of all: Prasidh Krishna. He went back-of-a-length in his spell to finish with figures of 2 for 23 of his own.

At the end of a fast-bowling buffet, GT marched to their biggest victory in the IPL. Their W in the last match – a 77-run win against RR – had been their previous best. They finished this night on top of the table, suddenly the team to beat this season.

Brief scores:
Gujarat Titans 168 for 5 in 20 overs (Sai Sudharsan 61, Nishant Sindhu 22, Washington Sundar 50, Jason Holder 11*; Pat Cummins 1-20, Praful Hinge 2-17, Sakib Hussain 2-37) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 86 in 14.5 overs (Ishan Kishan 11, Heinrich Klassen 14, Salil Arora 16, Pat Cummins 19; Mohammed Siraj 1-11, Jason Holder 3-20, Kagiso Rabada 3-28, Prasidh Krishna 2-23, Rashid Khan 1-03) by 82 runs

[Cricinfo]

Sports

Why Risk Mendis’ Purple Patch?

Published

9 hours ago

2026/05/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

Kusal Mendis

After years of disappointing returns, off-field controversies, lengthy suspensions and a bad-boy image among cricket fans, Kusal Mendis seems to have finally turned a corner. With a young daughter now at the centre of his world, Mendis appears to have realized that there’s more to life than pubs and nightclubs. The hours in the gym have increased significantly and so has his commitment to the game.

The turning point came in England last year. Every player dreams of playing a Test match at Lord’s, the Home of Cricket. Mendis, one of the senior players in the side, was dropped for the big game and it hurt him deeply.

Not many approved of the move. Former captain Duleep Mendis called it a poor decision and several others echoed similar sentiments. But the selectors knew exactly what they were doing. They wanted to prick Mendis’ ego and jolt him out of his comfort zone.

He returned for the next Test in a new role as wicketkeeper-batsman and Sri Lanka went onto win the game. Pathum Nissanka’s century grabbed most of the headlines, but it was Mendis who laid the platform. Chasing only 219, he counter-attacked aggressively, forcing England to spread the field and eventually playing right into Sri Lanka’s hands.

Since then, he has been a revelation in limited-overs cricket as well, forging a formidable opening partnership with Nissanka. His wicketkeeping too has been spotless.

People may have plenty to say about Mendis, but one thing that has never been in doubt is that he is a team man. He has been more than willing to do the hard yards while younger players like Pathum Nissanka, Charith Asalanka and Kamindu Mendis enjoy the limelight.

Such has been his form in the PSL that he finished as the tournament’s second highest run scorer, playing a major role in helping his franchise win the title.

Against that backdrop, the national selectors are contemplating handing him the white-ball captaincy. But Mendis already has enough on his plate as opener and wicketkeeper. Why burden him further with captaincy responsibilities?

Charith Asalanka, meanwhile, has been groomed for leadership since the age of 17. The selectors already blundered by taking the T20 captaincy away from him. Now, with the 50-over World Cup a year away, they seem keen to strip him of the ODI captaincy too.

Their previous choice for T20 captaincy, Dasun Shanaka, proved uninspiring. True, Asalanka can sometimes get under your skin with his excesses. During the recent NSL final, he was reportedly fined a significant portion of his match fee following an altercation with the umpires. But if you have entrusted a man with a job, then back him to do it.

One is reminded of what happened during the 2023 World Cup. Mendis began the tournament in blazing fashion with scores of 76 and 123 in the first two games. From the third match onwards, however, he was handed the captaincy after Shanaka’s injury and his form nosedived. He failed to score a single half-century in the next seven innings.

Ironically, the same man who now chairs the selection panel was the architect of that decision as well. Some lessons, it seems, are never learnt.

by Rex Clementine

Sports

Bowlers propel Maliban Biscuits to final with a three wicket win

Published

9 hours ago

2026/05/13

Sahan Weerasooriya

15TH STAFFORD MOTORS – MCA G DIVISION T20 LEAGUE CRICKET TOURNAMENT

Chathuranga Dewapriya, Mohomed Shilmi and Chamara Rathnayake shared 8 wickets between them to help Maliban Biscuits ‘B’, defeat Star Garments by three wickets at the Thurstan College ground on Sunday [10th] and qualify for the final of the Stafford Motors sponsored MCA G division T20 cricket tournament.

Both teams qualified for the semi-final undefeated and bowling first in the semifinal, Maliban Biscuits were able to restrict the strong Star Garment team to 98 runs in 18.5 overs. Rishantha Anushka and Shakila de Silva topped the score card with 18 runs each.

In the chase, skipper Tarindu Siriwardena and Sameera Lakmal chipped in with twenty plus scores to help Maliban Biscuits cross the line with three wickets in hand and fourteen balls to spare. Dunik Perera was the pick of the bowlers for Star Garments capturing three wickets.

The second semi-final between tournament sponsors Stafford Motors and undefeated Brandix Apparel will be played on Sunday [17th] at the Nalanda College ground and the winners will meet Maliban Biscuits in the final scheduled to be played at the MCA ground on 24th May.

Brief scores:

Star Garments

98/10 in 18.5 overs [Rishantha Anushka 18, Dunik Perera 16, Shakila de Silva 18, Nawanjaya Fernando 12; Tharindu Siriwardena 1-19, Chathuranga Dewapriya 3-06, Chathuranga Alwis 1-17, Mohomad Shilmi 3-15, Chamara Rathnayake 2-21]

Maliban Biscuits

‘B’ 100/7 in 17.4 overs [Tharindu Siriwardena 21, Mohomad Shilmi 15, Sameera Lakmal 24, Manchuka Kumara 12*; Suwahas Yapa 1-16, Dunik Perera 3-22, Dhanuka Dulanjana 2-21]