Sunrisers Hyderabad now have back-to-back wins after they defeated the unbeaten Gujarat Titans by eight wickets. Kane Williamson decided that SRH will bowl first on a pitch that wasn’t as flat as the other venues in this year’s IPL. GT ended up getting a par score of 162, but SRH walked home comfortably in the end after having an extremely slow start to their inning. Let us look at some of the key moments from match 21 of the 2022 IPL.
Hardik Pandya at 4
In a new team and a new role as captain, Hardik Pandya is playing another new role of a middle-order batter instead of finishing the innings as he successfully did for MI for several years. In four innings so far, he has scored 141 runs with an excellent average of 47. However, is he making an impact?
Pandya’s strike rate this season has been 122.61, which is modest not only for his standards but even for most middle-order batters. Before this season, Pandya’s career strike rate in IPL was 153.75. In all the previous seasons where he scored as many runs as this season, his strike rate never dropped below 133.33 (2018), and his dot ball percentage never went above 33.13% (2017). His dot ball percentage this year is 38.3%.
What was more astonishing was that for someone who has finished games so often, Pandya couldn’t hit a single boundary in the last seven overs. GT will have to revaluate their strategy of playing one of the most destructive finishers in the world in an anchor role.
SRH’s mixed Powerplay
Chasing the target, SRH needed to score at 8.15 RPO. On a pitch that wasn’t as flat as some of the others, SRH needed a bit of early momentum to set the tone of the innings and the chase, but they just couldn’t get going.
In their first four overs, SRH managed to score just 11 runs. However, they ended their powerplay with their best score in the first six overs in this season – 42/0. In the first four overs, GT bowlers focused purely on the good length, bowling into the batter’s body. This made sure that the batters neither got the room nor the length to hit the balls, as they struggled to put the ball away.
In the last two overs of Powerplay, GT tried searching for wickets and went overboard. Shami was guilty of bowling too short, trying to hurry the batters, but they were now too set to get rattled. Lockie Ferguson had one of his worst starts as, despite bowling on good lengths, a bit of width along with his extra pace allowed Abhishek Sharma to score freely on the offside, hitting four fours in an over.
Pandya vs Williamson
Pandya and Williamson, both tried to play a responsible captain’s knock by anchoring the innings, but Williamson’s was far more effective than Pandya’s, and understanding that is easy even without the benefit of hindsight.
GT finished with 162 runs against SRH despite Pandya remaining unbeaten after playing 42 balls. His strike rate in this match (119.04) was the second-worst in this match for any batter with a minimum of 10 balls, and he played the second-most balls in the match (42), behind Williamson’s 46. Williamson struck at a marginally better strike rate of 123.91, however, the situation allowed Williamson to bide his time.
While chasing, a batter has the luxury of knowing the target, and they can afford to pace their innings and not get fazed by a few dot balls. But while batting first, a batter has to show more intent and take more calculative risks, especially with resources available. After the first four overs, Williamson was on seven off 13 balls (SR 53.85), but knowing that SRH weren’t chasing a steep total allowed him to adjust to the nature of the pitch and then take the attack to the bowlers.
This brings us back to the question – Is Hardik Pandya the right choice for GT at number four?