Travis Head scored the fastest-hundred by an SRH batter by getting there in just 39 balls, SRH also smashed 22 sixes in all which was the most in any IPL innings. Travis Head‘s eight sixes was the joint-most by any SRH batter in IPL history. And he had great company. Heinrich Klaasen, given a promotion at No. 3, scored only 67 but even that contained 7 sixes in all.
Travis Head, who has won Australia the World Test Championship and the ODI World Cup final over the last year, sent another warning signal for his opponents ahead of the T20 World Cup. He had scored a 24-ball 62 when Sunrisers made 277 for 3 against Mumbai on March 27; now he belted a career-best 102 off 41 against Royal Challengers Bengaluru.
Pitch and Toss
57m and 64m square boundaries respectively, 69m straight down the ground. Quite a bit of live green grass on it but it’s patchy. Some balls will zip through, some balls will skid through, particularly with the new ball. This ground has had more spin than any other venue this season. This particular surface is a quite dry and it’s cracking as well. The spinners will get consistent spin as the game goes on. Team batting second has an advantage here, reckons Aaron Finch.
RCB skipper Faf Du Plessis won the toss and chose to field and rested Mohammad Siraj, Glenn Maxwell giving chance to Yash Dayal and Lockie Fergusson in playing 11
SRH skipper Pat Cummins who felt 240 was a par score decided to go with unchanged team.
Travis Head breaks RCB’s hearts
RCB went into the match without a single frontline spinner. But with two left-handers in Head and Abhishek Sharma opening for Sunrisers, they began with the offspin of batting allrounder Will Jacks. He found turn in the first over, and conceded just seven. His second over was even better, going for just four.
And yet, Sunrisers put up 76 in the powerplay, the third time they had gone past 70 during that phase of the innings this season. By then, Travis Head had motored to his half-century off 20 balls. Travis Head hit four sixes across the fifth and sixth overs as RCB debutant Lockie Ferguson went for 18 and then Yash Dayal for 20.
Travis Head’s second fifty was even quicker, taking only 19 balls, and the century came up in the 12th over. Ferguson had Travis Head ballooning a catch to mid-off halfway into the 13th, but Klaasen had arrived by then, and SRH already had 165 on the board. That was enough indication of what more was to come on a flat pitch surrounded by small boundaries.
The sixes story above summed up SRH’s batting approach in essence. Put in to bat, Pat Cummins only half-joked that 240 was a par total at the Chinnaswamy stadium but his batters seemed to have taken the words to heart. First Abhishek Sharma, alongside the effervescent Head, stole the show with a 108-run stand in just 49 balls.
Abhishek matched Travis Head stroke for stroke as the duo toyed with RCB’s attack irrespective of the bowling changes made. It was a show that continued with Klaasen arriving and having Mahipal Lomror to challenge him early on. Klaasen latched onto the spinner with a couple of sixes to get his innings going while Travis Head took down the pacers with ease.
Klaasen continues six fest
It was a show that continued with Klaasen arriving and having Mahipal Lomror to challenge him early on. Klaasen latched onto the spinner with a couple of sixes to get his innings going while Travis Head took down the pacers with ease. He had started off by picking out Lockie Ferguson and Yash Dayal to get to a fifty in just 20 balls inside the powerplay. And it continued with Will Jacks being taken down for 21 in his third over. He raced towards his ton with three fours off Vijaykumar Vyshak as SRH brought up 200 in just 15 overs.
Promoted to No. 3 after the openers hammered 108 in 8.1 overs, Klaasen kept Sunrisers’ party going. He managed only three runs from his first five deliveries, but soon got into the six-hitting groove that has made him among the world’s most dangerous T20 hitters. He swung Dayal and Ferguson for sixes over midwicket just before Travis Head was dismissed, and that wicket did nothing to temper Klassen’s aggression.
No breathing space for RCB as SRH scores 287 for 3 within 11 days to break their own record.
The only question then was if they could breach their own record total of 277. Abdul Samad and Markram put all doubts away with stunning cameos, as the last two overs produced 46 runs.
RCB had entered the game with a host of changes, dropping the likes of Glenn Maxwell, Mohammad Siraj and continuing to keep Cameron Green out. But it didn’t result in any change of fortune as SRH brought their ‘A’ game on the night. No bowler was spared, with Yash Dayal’s 69 in four overs becoming the second-most expensive spell in IPL history.
No RCB bowler had an economy-rate less than Jack’s 10.70. For if it was not Head or Klaasen, there was Aiden Markram and Abdul Samad. The duo smashed 56 in the last three overs to power SRH to where no team had gone before in the IPL.
RCB openers started in frenzy in conquest of 288.
No prizes for guessing that. Although it wore a look of green and brown as some two-paced surfaces do, this one turned out to be a batting paradise. The slower balls were picked up and deposited into the stands with ease and no particular bowler could claim to have come to terms on it from either end.
In a batting exhibition, the bowlers were invariably reduced to sideshows. For even as they started with left-arm spin which has traditionally been an Achilles heel for RCB’s openers, Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis got them going with a rousing opening stand that raised 80 in just 38 balls. Du Plessis was the early adopter to the ‘hit everything’ strategy and it brought him a quickfire fifty before some hiccups.
There was only one way for RCB to bat in their response, and Virat Kohli and Faf du Plessis counterattacked their way to 79 in the powerplay, three more than what Sunrisers had managed at that stage. RCB’s opening pair smashed 11 fours and four sixes in that phase alone. Even so, RCB were behind the asking rate, which had now climbed to nearly 15.
SRH Impact player Mayank Markande and skipper Pat Cummins made a sudden impact in middle overs
RCB lost Kohli – bowled off a Mayank Markande googly and then saw the highly-reputed Will Jacks be run out backing up too far as bowler Jaydev Unadkat managed a deflection onto the stumps after his follow-through. That dismissal set them too far back, and they further plummeted when Pat Cummins got Du Plessis to glove a pull before trapping Saurav Chauhan LBW first ball. Cummins would also get Mahipal Lomror to chop one onto his stumps, leaving RCB severely dented. But that didn’t matter much to Dinesh Karthik.
Sunrisers’ Impact Sub Mayank Markande, who replaced Travis Head at the start of the chase, beat Kohli with a googly just after the powerplay, and that began something of a mini-collapse, as RCB slipped to 122 for 5 by the end of the 10th over, with Pat Cummins striking twice including getting du Plessis for 62.
Dinesh Karthik fights to limit the damage and propel RCB to respectable 262 for 7.
Even as the game appeared to be slipping away from RCB at 122/5 at the halfway stage, Dinesh Karthik did not let go. He continued the hitting exhibition that had been on offer all night, using deft footwork and smart angles to smash five fours and seven sixes in his 35-ball 83. It was still not enough to prevent loss, but saved RCB a few blushes at the end.
Dinesh Karthik entered to keep the crowd entertained. He was the dominant partner in a 59-run partnership with Lomror, which briefly stirred hopes of an outlandish finish, as Markande and Jaydev Unadkat leaked 46 across the 13th and 14th overs.
A six-run 15th over from Cummins, which also included the wicket of Lomror, effectively ended RCB’s hopes, but Karthik kept going, hitting at least one six ever over until he was dismissed with eight balls remaining. Seven sixes came off his bat including a switch-hit off Bhuvneshwar Kumar, but he couldn’t prevent RCB from slumping to a fifth successive loss and remaining rooted to the bottom of the points table.
The big hits were incessant. Travis Head hit eight sixes, and Heinrich Klaasen seven in a 31-ball 67, out of a Sunrisers total of 22 – another IPL record. RCB did their bit too, on a dream day for batters, sending 16 hits soaring over the M Chinnaswamy Stadium’s boundaries as they made a superb effort to restrict the damage to their net run rate. They finished on 262 for 7, Dinesh Karthik leading the way with 83 off 35 balls. The match aggregate of 549 runs was the highest in all T20 cricket.
Presentations and Road ahead.
Faf Du Plessis the loosing skipper said : Much better (batting performance) from us, that was a proper t20 wicket. Just tried to get close in the end, but 280 was very far. It’s tough. We tried a few things, we tried different things. There’s no way to hide when your confidence is low. The fast bowlers found it quite difficult out there. Similar to the batting perspective, we need to work on few areas. Need to make sure the run rate doesn’t go down after powerplay.
The guys put up their hand and never gave up (in the run chase). It was good to see the fight, 30-40 runs from the bowling perspective was a bit too much. It’s important to go away and freshen your mind, it’s such a mental game. Sometimes you feel your mind is going to explode. When you get back to the contest you have to give full commitment.
Pat Cummins the winning skipper said : Wish I was a batter. Wonderful game of cricket. Amazing scenes. Good fun. You try your best. If you bowl an over of 7 or 8, you can have an impact on the game. I have given up trying to read the wicket. Chinnaswamy looked dry. Really happy. Four wins now. The batters have gone about it having a smile on their faces.
Travis Head the Player of the Match for his hundred said : Had some food, had a shower. Exciting game again after the Mumbai game. Played beautifully. We thought we had to adapt in the first six overs. But we had the batting order and they had the license to after the bowlers. We compliment each other well. He is a young guy. We fed off each other’s confidence. Pleased with how I hit the ball today.
The boxing game has ended. The two pugilists didn’t punch each other. They punched helpless punching bags or should I say bowlers. In the end, SRH landed more blows than RCB. Who wants to be a bowler? 277 few nights back, 287 today. SRH are setting some stern benchmarks for T20 batting.
Travis Head had a massive tailwind to start off and scored a ton off 39 balls. Klaasen at 3 carried on like he does and Samad blasted a 10-ball 37. RCB were out-batted. Faf and Kohli came out all guns blazing. But Kohli fell and that opened the door for a collapse as Markande and Cummins ate up the top-order.
Both of them were superb on a wicket which had nothing in it for the bowlers. But RCB finished with 262 as DK came up with some lusty exhibition of big innovative hitting. He timed the ball like a dream but didn’t have much support from the other end. RCB have now lost 5 on the bounce. They are languishing at the bottom of the table. And the bowling effort today would have scarred them further. Tough one indeed for the home side!
Four out of the top five totals in the history of the IPL have come in this season. Two of those happened today. The aggregate of 549 is the highest ever in a game of T20. The MCS is known to be a batting turf. But it was a dream today for the batters and few of them sleep-walked a few runs on it.
The bowlers just went for a hiding as four of the RCB bowlers conceded more than 50 runs. The word hapless defined RCB’s bowling effort and their position on the points table. SRH have 8 points from 6 games now. They will continue to climb up given their artillery with the bat. RCB have a five-day break before they go to Kolkata to take on the Knight Riders on April 21 while SRH go to Delhi to play the Capitals on April 20.