One more time, the Sunrisers Hyderabad bowlers did a brilliant job in the first innings, this time Mustafizur Rahman bowling a parsimonious spell that even Scrooge would have been proud of, before David Warner went hammer and tongs again like only he can. The result of that dominance was a hat-trick of wins for SRH, with Kings XI Punjab the team to suffer.
A solid crowd at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad were treated to some delightful limited-overs bowling from Mustafizur, who conceded a mere nine runs in his four overs, while picking up a couple of wickets as well. Kings XI, unable to find a way to solve the Mustafizur changes of pace, managed just 143/6 in their 20 overs.
Warner led the Sunrisers reply again, scoring a brilliant 59 from just 31 balls (7x4, 3x6) to guide his team to a straightforward-as-they-come five-wicket victory with 13 balls to spare.
The SRH strategy for all three of their wains has been simple – let the bowlers do the job and then let Warner do his. All three times it has worked like charm, with Bhuvneshwar Kumar getting his team off to a nice start with the ball by picking up Murali Vijay in the third over.
Manan Vohra (25, 23b, 3x4, 1x6) then got run out, thanks to a direct hit from Shikhar Dhawan, before the possibility of a rebuild came about when Shaun Marsh and captain David Miller looked like they might stitch together a big(ish) partnership. But, it was not to be as Miller (9, 11b, 1x4) edged one off Moises Henriques, before the Australian all-rounder picked up a second wicket in the over as Glenn Maxwell flicked one straight down the throat of fine-leg.
That left Kings XI on 65/4 in 10 overs, and despite the best efforts of Marsh (40, 34b, 3x4, 2x6), Nikhil Naik (22, 28b, 1x4), in for Wriddhiman Saha, and Axar Patel (36, 17b, 1x4, 3x6), KXIP could only get to 143.
With Warner in the form that he is in, if his wicket did not come early, the match was always going to end up in a hurry and it quickly became a matter of when rather than if, after SRH, in the Hyderabad heat, scorched their way to 65/0 in the Powerplay overs.
It was comfortable from there, even after Warner and Aditya Tare fell in the 10th over off successive deliveries, Shikhar Dhawan (45, 44b, 4x4) in the final ball of the 14th and Eoin Morgan (25, 20b, 2x4, 1x6) and Deepak Hooda with five runs needed, as the Sunrisers notched another win, their third out of five in IPL 2016.
