IPL 2019: Match 19 – SRH vs MI – Who Said What

The match between the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) and Mumbai Indians (MI) turned out to be a one-sided affair. SRH has been a dominating team at home, but today they had to accept defeat by 40 runs at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad.

Mumbai put up a respectable score

After being out in to bat first, the Mumbai-based franchise put up 136 for seven in 20 overs. The start wasn’t a great one for the visitors as they were reduced to 5/65 in the 13th over. Spinner Mohammad Nabi nipped out Rohit Sharma to strike first blood. Sandeep Sharma got the second wicket of Suryakumar Yadav. Siddarth Kaul picked up the prized scalps of Quinton de Kock and Krunal Pandya.

Hardik Pandya also couldn’t make an impact and got out for 14 runs. Rashid Khan picked him up. In the end, it was a whirlwind knock of 46 runs from 26 balls that propelled Mumbai’s score. The Trinidadian strained to get bat to ball in the early part of his innings, but he laid into the bowling and scored some crucial runs in the fag end of the innings. Rahul Chahar smacked two boundaries to score 10 off seven.

Joseph stars

David Warner and Jonny Bairstow went hammer and tongs and raced away to a 33-run stand in 22 balls. However, both batters perished in a space of three balls. Even as Rahul Chahar got rid of the dangerous Bairstow, speedster Alzarri Joseph rattled Warner’s woodwork in his maiden over in the IPL. The Windies bowler accounted for Vijay Shankar’s wicket. Manish Pandey flattered to deceive as well.

Yusuf Pathan got out for a duck and SRH’s innings capsized significantly and they were eventually bowled out for 96 runs in 17.4 overs. Joseph bowled beautifully and picked up stupendous figures of 3.4-1-12-6. He turned out to be unplayable and his last three wickets were Rashid Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Siddarth Kaul. The lower order of SRH just couldn’t get momentum into their innings.

Bhuvneshwar Kumar, the SRH captain, said

I think it started off when we dropped Pollard, he scored 25-30 runs – it is a huge margin. It could have been an easy chase if we would have applied ourselves. When you drop catches it is never easy. There is less margin for error (when you are bowling) but you need to grab your chances to restrict any team to under 120. It (captaincy) is difficult but you have experienced players around, not a tough job. First three matches we got good opening partnerships but we never got a chance to test our middle order. Today when we did we did not apply ourselves. We will see what went wrong before going into the next match. It was not a normal flat wicket that we get in Hyderabad but it was not a tough chase.

Rohit Sharma, the MI captain, said

Yes, very pleased. Winning the game is obviously a great result. I thought 136 wasn’t a great batting effort, but we bowled in the right areas, kept them guessing all the time and held our nerves. We were in the game till the last ball which is what we spoke of.

It was a sensational bowling effort from Alzarri, to bowl like this in first game. He’s come in on a lot of confidence from the CPL and he’s carrying it here. We didn’t bat well to start with, kept losing wickets and we knew after a few overs was that it wasn’t a 170-180 pitch.

The pitch was under covers for a day, it was raining as well and the wicket was a bit sticky. So we knew that 140 would be a good score to defend because we’ve got the quality in our bowling and we back them to defend whatever we get. The bulk of the runs were scored by the top-order, but it’s not that their middle order wasn’t good and we wanted to exploit that.

We knew that once we got an early wicket we were in the game and with the spin and the seamers we have, we knew we could knock them out in the middle. We want to win as many games as possible at the start because we know how hectic it gets in the end.

A few of the guys leaving for the WC doesn’t help either. To start the tournament is important and the last two games shows the quality we have in our squad. Again, we needed characters to step up – Pollard came in and played that knock towards the end which was very crucial in contributing to the total. All the bowlers then stepped in and contributed with Alzarri.

Alzarri Joseph, the Player of the Match, said

It is a dream. I could not have asked for a better start. I just backed my plans and it worked. My plan was to keep it simple and back myself. I know we had a game to win and I was focused on that (on why he didn’t celebrate Warner’s wicket). The boys are playing well and putting in a lot of hard work. The coaches are also helping us with their inputs.

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