Hyderabad spoil Bangalore’s party

Hyderabad: After three successive defeats at home, the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) finally found their feet and gave their fans something to cheer as they outplayed Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) in all departments at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium (RGICS) here on Tuesday. It was out and out Hyderabad’s day. The two changes to the playing eleven paid-off. Their new opening partnership clicked and despite dropping Yuvraj Singh four times, they did not pay a heavy price.

Chasing 161 in a match where they had nothing to lose, Shikhar Dhawan and David Warner got Hyderabad off to their best start of the season adding 100 runs in 12 overs. Dhawan too struck a purple patch as he smashed 50 in 39 balls with seven fours and one massive six.

Warner (59) played the sheet anchor’s role till Dhawan departed and then opened up to take the Sunrisers to the verge of glory, an effort that fetched him the man of the match award. All that was left now was to finish the job off, which was achieved by cool heads like Naman Ojha (24), Aaron Finch (11 not out) and Darren Sammy (10 not out). Despite not living up to the expectations with the bat, Yuvraj Singh made sure that he kept his side in the game till the end with two catches and a sharp piece of fielding that led to the fall of Dhawan.

Sunrisers’ win means they still have an outside chance to qualify for the play-offs. For Bangalore though, it comes as a huge setback as they now stand tied at 10 points with Sunrisers Hyderabad. Earlier, after being put in to field, exceptional death bowling and a fine spell by debutant Parveez Rasool helped the hosts to restrict a star-studded Bangalore at 160. Virat Kohli led from the front with a 67-run knock after they lost Parthiv Patel (4) and Chris Gayle (14) early in the day. Yuvraj Singh had his share of luck as he was dropped four times but he failed to capitalise on the chances and fell for 21 leaving the visitors struggling at 80 for three. A B De Villiers (29) and Suresh Rana (12) played cameos to guide Bangalore to a total that was just not enough on the day.

Brief scores: RCB 160/6 (V Kohli 67, B Kumar 2/27) lost to SRH 161/3 (D Warner 59, S Dawan 50).