Twitter Reactions: Shimron Hetmyer and Gurkeerat Mann spoil SRH's party at the Chinnaswamy

The Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) have done a favour to the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) by defeating the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL). Going into the final day of the league stage, the fourth qualifying spot is still open the KKR have a real chance to go through to the playoffs. On the other hand, SRH will pray for Mumbai Indians (MI) to do wonders for them in order to qualify with 12 points.

After being invited to bat first, the SRH got some quick runs upfront in the powerplay courtesy of Martin Guptill and Wriddhiman Saha. The duo added 46 runs for the opening wicket before the latter miscued a shot off Navdeep Saini. The visitors suffered a mini-collapse here as Guptill and Manish Pandey followed quickly to leave the team at 61/3 in the eighth over.

Kane Williamson and Vijay Shankar then played cautiously to stitch a stand of 36 runs. Shankar played some exquisite strokes off Washington Sundar and it was clear that SRH were trying to post a total close to 200. But he got too greedy after hitting two consecutive sixes only to hole out while trying to go for the third one. His wicket slowed down the things considerably as they continued to slump.

The likes of Mohammad Nabi and Yusuf Pathan failed big time to leave the team reeling at 139/7. Meanwhile, Williamson was playing a calm knock and farmed the strike in the final over to churn out as many runs as possible. Umesh Yadav was handed the ball by Virat Kohli and the fast bowler undid all the hard work done. He dished out the deliveries in the slot and the Kiwi was too good to miss out.

He brought his class out to collect 28 runs and finished unbeaten on 70 off just 43 balls with five fours and four sixes. SRH, thanks to the final over blitz, posted 175 runs on the board in 20 overs.

Hetmyer and Gurkeerat keep SRH at bay

The jam-packed crowd at the Chinnaswamy stadium hoped for Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers to take the team home and the duo got together in the first over itself with Parthiv Patel getting out for a duck. But Khaleel Ahmed and Bhuvneshwar Kumar left the crowd stunned by accounting for the top three wickets in no time. RCB were down and out at 20/3 and SRH’s victory looked certain at that stage.

But Shimron Hetmyer was playing for the first time after getting dropped earlier in the season and he was hungry for runs. Unfortunately, SRH bowlers played into his hands and the Caribbean found his groove. Even Gurkeerat Singh Mann, playing only his third game of the season, showed amazing composure. He first rotated the strike patiently when Hetmyer was hitting the ball well.

And then opened himself up superbly when the time came to dampen SRH’s spirits. To make things worse for themselves, Yusuf Pathan dropped Hetmyer while there were quite a few misfields on the day from the visiting team. They smacked boundaries at the right time and by the time Hetmyer was dismissed in the 18th over, he had added 144 runs for the fourth wicket with Gurkeerat.

Gurkeerat and Sundar too got out in the following over which made things interesting but Umesh Yadav came out and slammed a couple of fours in the last over to take RCB over the line. SRH, with this loss, have made things extremely tough for them and they will be now hoping for Mumbai Indians (MI) to beat the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) on Sunday at the Wankhede.

Here’s how Twitter reacted:

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