IPL 2019: Martin Guptill defends under fire Rashid Khan after SRH’s loss to RCB

Sunrisers Hyderabad needed just a win from their last two games to make it into the playoffs, but they managed to lose both the games and now will have to keep an eye on the Mumbai Indians and Kolkata Knight Riders match to know their fate. If they had defeat RCB in their last league match in Chinnaswamy the other day, they would have been in the top four, thanks to their superior net run rate.

SRH opener Martin Guptill, who has played the last two games, gave a good start to the team while batting first against RCB. Then Kane Williamson played a good knock of 70, to take the team to 175 runs. Then, SRH bowlers removed the RCB top three in Virat, Parthiv, and AB de Villiers for just 20 runs on the board, to give hope to the team. However, Shimron Hetmyer’s 75 and Gurkeerat Singh’s 65 and their 144-run partnership, took the game away from SRH enough, for Umesh Yadav to ensure a win in the last over.

Guptill defends Rashid Khan despite a bad match

SRH is a team known for its great bowling attack and ability to defend small totals, failed to do so this season. The likes of Siddharth Kaul, Sandeep Sharma and to everyone’s surprise, Bhuvneshwar and Rashid Khan were taken apart by the opposition batsmen throughout the tournament.

20-year-old Rashid was particularly singled out for punishment by Hetmyer and Gurkeerat in their marathon partnership during the chase, as the Afghan leggie went for 44 runs in his 4 overs, as his bad luck continued, given his ill-fated attempt to defend single digit score in Super Over against MI in their last game.

“You are not going to bowl wicket balls every ball. It is T20 cricket and there are going to be times where we are going to go over 10 runs an hour. Unfortunately for Rashid, it was tonight for him. Look, he has bowled well for us during the tournament. While he hasn’t picked up as many wickets as he probably would have liked, he has actually still gone mostly under 7 runs an over. It is cricket, it’s going to happen time to time,” Guptill was quoted as saying in the post-match press conference.

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