New Delhi, April 16 Former Australia cricketer Aaron Finch labelled the difference in boundaries hit by the team as the main reason behind Royal Challengers Bengaluru's 25 runs defeat against Sunrisers Hyderabad in Match 30 of Indian Premier League (IPL) 2024 at M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru.
After Travis Head smashed his maiden IPL century in 39 deliveries, Dinesh Karthik waged a lone battle for RCB, smashing 83 in just 35 deliveries. However, Pat Cummins' three-fer proved decisive as RCB suffered their sixth defeat in seven games after SRH managed a record 287/3, the highest-ever total in IPL history, beating their own record of 277 against Mumbai Indians earlier in the season.
"They had to start at 14. And if you have one bad over it goes to 16. So it was never going to be a game where you talk about batsmanship, it's a game where you talk about who hit the most sixes and that was the difference,” said Finch to Star Sports Cricket Live.
Heinrich Klaasen, for whom hitting a six is as easy as eating a cookie, pumped 67 from 31 deliveries. Of those runs, 42 were scored via sixes. “They were getting lucky in the first Power-play and they needed those to be sixes and Travis Head was the difference there, he started off as well, his intent to get the ball rolling and then a big courageous move to keep Klaasen at number 3 and say we need to keep going, we have a deep batting line up and we are going to put the bowlers to the sword here,” he added.
The RCB entered this match without a single specialist spinner and with Mohammad Siraj on the bench, RCB’s bowling lineup looked inexperienced. They went for the off-spin of Will Jacks, who was taken for 32 in his three overs. RCB's pace bowlers Reece Topley, Yash Dayal, Lockie Ferguson, and Vijaykumar Vyshak were belted for 137 off ten overs.
“Because a lot of times teams think that Klaasen has so much power to the back end, let's hold him back. Like Glenn Maxwell at times, you don't want to expose him right now because if he gets out, then we've got to rebuild. Teams don't think like that anymore, Dan Vettori has talked about that, play aggressively, play fearlessly and bear the consequence if it doesn't go right. If it does go right, you don't lose,” he added.
It was all so predictable and repetitious that it nearly became monotonous. It was a perfect day for batsmen as Sunrisers hammered 22 sixes, another IPL record, and RCB struck 16 of their own.
In this match, Sunrisers Hyderabad elevated T20 batting to a new level. It was impressive that they hit 41 boundaries in the innings. There has only ever been one IPL match where a team has hit more boundaries; the well-known 2013 encounter between Pune Warriors and Royal Challengers Bengaluru. On that particular occasion, Chris Gayle contributed 30 out of 42 boundaries.
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