Krunal Pandya put in an all-round performance while his skipper KL Rahul struck a four with the bat as Lucknow Super Giants registered a five-wicket win over Sunrisers Hyderabad in their Indian Premier League match here on Friday.
Krunal first took a brilliant spell of 3/18 with the ball to restrict SRH to 121 for 8 and then followed it up with a 23-ball 34 as LSG chased down the target with 24 balls to spare in a low-scoring match helped to do. ,
He put on 55 runs with Rahul (35) for the third wicket to put the game out of SRH’s reach. By the time Krunal was dismissed in the 13th over, LSG needed just 22 runs to win. The home team eventually reached 127 for 5 in 16 overs.
Rahul hit four fours in his innings of 31 balls while Krunal’s innings had four fours and a four.
Rahul and Romario Shepherd (0) were dismissed off consecutive deliveries by Adil Rashid (2/23) in the 15th over but this was delaying the inevitable.
Seasoned pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar conceded 13 runs in the first over of the LSG chase, including five wides and a four off Rahul.
Rahul hit boundaries against Washington Sundar and Aiden Makram but lost his opening partner Kyle Mayers (13) in the fourth over bowled by Fazalhaq Farooqui, who came in as SRH’s impact player in place of Rahul Tripathi.
Bhuvneshwar made up for his costly first over by taking the wicket of Deepak Hooda (7), caught and bowled in the last powerplay delivery to reduce LSG to 45 for 2.
Rahul and Krunal gave SRH no breakthrough for 6.2 overs as LSG edged closer to the target.
LSG were always well ahead of the asking rate and they needed just 40 runs from the last 10 overs with eight wickets in hand.
Earlier, left-arm spinner Krunal took the wickets of three top-order batsmen in a brilliant spell.
Krunal scalped the wickets of Mayank Agarwal (8), Anmolpreet Singh (31) and skipper Makram (0) – the last two in consecutive balls in the eighth over – to reduce SRH, who opted to bat first, to 50. For 3.
Playing his first match of the season as well as his first match as captain of Sunrisers Hyderabad, Markram went for a drive on the first ball he faced, but it drifted away to disturb his off-stump. .
Ravi Bishnoi then dismissed Harry Brook for 3 when he was stumped by Nicholas Pooran as SRH were 55 for 4 in nine overs. SRH couldn’t recover from there.
Veteran leg-spinner Amit Mishra produced a fine spell of 2/23 later in the innings to restrict SRH to a small total. Mishra was replaced by ‘impact player’ Ayush Badoni with only one over remaining in the innings.
LSG skipper Rahul’s ploy of introducing spin in the third over as Krunal’s variable bounce paid off on a difficult wicket.
Agarwal went for a drive straight to hitting Marcus Stoinis in the third over to get the first wicket for LSG. Five overs later, he trapped well-set batsman Anmolpreet lbw, before dismissing Makram next ball to spoil South Africa’s first outing as SRH captain.
From 43 for 1 after the powerplay overs, SRH were 63 for 4 at the halfway stage.
A one-down Rahul Tripathi (34) played a lone hand in the second half of the innings as he scored 39, the biggest partnership for SRH with Washington Sundar (16), before he was dismissed by Yash in the 18th over. I fell Thakur.
Abdul Samad hit two sixes in the final over bowled by Jaydev Unadkat to take SRH past 120.
The text of this story is published from a wire agency feed without any modification. Only the headline has been changed.
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