Hyderabad: Sunrisers Hyderabad started their IPL campaign on a brilliant note as they thrashed Pune Warriors by 22 runs in their opening match of the Indian Premier League Season 6 here at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Friday.
The Sunrisers defended a paltry total of 126 runs and the credit for their win goes to their bowlers, including a three-wicket hauls by Dale Steyn and Amit Mishra while Thisara Perera too came up with astonhsing spell.
Steyn came in firing all cylinders in his first spell and gave just four runs to push Pune’s openers back against the wall and Amit Mishra capitalised really well with his aggressive spin bowling and dismissed three very important batsmen to turn the tides in favours of Sunrisers. Thisara Perera also contributed both with the bat as well as bowl. He scored 30 runs and picked up two wickets and also ran Mitchell Starc out on his own bowling.
Pune warriors got off to a cautious start and played sensibly in the first six overs to see-off the duo of Dale Steyn and Ishant Sharma who were bowling brilliantly to keep the batsmen quiet. Strike bowlers did their job well and Thisara was brought in to replace the Steyn from one-end. The bowling change did wonders for Kumar Sangakkara as Thisara wrapped up the two top order batsmen in the span of two overs. Uthappa added 24 runs to the team's total before he was dismissed while Marlon Samuels made just five runs. The real problem with Pune was they made the mess of low-score by not scoring boundaries quite frequently and ended up losing wickets in patches. Pune Warriors' approach was questionable as they made this small total look as big one.
Yuvraj Singh came in to the middle but didn’t stay for long and was dismissed for just two runs. He was stumped by Parthiv Patel as Amit Mishra deceived the southpaw with the flight.
Mishra got another breakthrough in the very next over when he sent back Manish Pandey to the pavilion after he had contributed 15 runs to Pune’s total. Mishra also managed to dismiss the set batsman Abhishek Nayar who was trying to charge him down as he came dancing down the pitch but was deceived by the flight.
Meanwhile, Ross Taylor in order to accelerate the strike, he went after Akshath who bowled cleverly a slow yorker which was took off Taylor's stumps.
Steyn put the final nail in Pune's coffin as he dismissed three batsmen off four balls and and sealed the victory for Hyderabad. He bowled out Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Rahul Sharma on two successive deliveries and in the fifth ball of his final spell he got Ashok Dinda out and handed over 22 run victory to Hyderabad.
Sangakkara showed the real character as he kept backing up his boys throughout the match to come up with this magical performance.
Earlier in the evening, Hyderabad started off well with their new opening pair of Parthiv Patel and Akshath Reddy. Parthiv took the aggressive mode and started scoring boundaries while Akshath kept dealing in ones and twos to keep the scoreboard ticking. But very soon Parthiv Patel was bamboozled by Ashok Dinda who bowled a swinging delivery which Patel tried to play across the line. Kumar Sangakkara came in to the middle and was looking good. But he failed to do justice as he was beaten in the air by Rahul Sharma who bowled well. Sangakkara added 15 runs to the total and after that it was again a series of failure for Sunrisers. Akshath and Cameron White threw away their wickets after getting a good start.
Thisara Perera came in to the centre and without wasting much time started taking the aerial route which was very much needed at the monet. He accelerated the scoring rate in last five overs and made sure that they reach some competitive total. But Hyderabad suffered a huge blow when he got out after scoring 30 runs off just 18 balls which included three boundaries and one huge six.
Ashish Reddy and Ravi Teja took few singles and doubles in the end to take score to 126.
