Until five days back, Shardul Thakur didn’t officially have an IPL contract. True, he was netting with Lucknow Super Giants and was a shoo-in to replace one of their several Indian fast bowlers in the infirmary, but he wasn’t a part of the squad protocol-wise. And here we are, less than a week into IPL 2025, with the 33-year-old Shardul Thakur donning the Purple Cap.
It wasn’t until March 23 that Shardul Thakur formally became a part of IPL 2025, roped in to replace the injured Mohsin Khan at his base price of Rs. 2 crore. In a largely inexperienced India-centric bowling attack, Shardul Thakur was expected to lend guidance and leadership, and pick up a few wickets, if possible. Inside the first week of the tournament, Shardul Thakur proudly flaunts the Purple Cap with six scalps from two matches, including a career-best four for 34 on Thursday night against the most feared batting unit of the competition.
Lucknow Super Giants bounced back from a heartbreaking defeat on Monday night, to register their first win of IPL 2025 against Sunrisers Hyderabad with five wickets and 3.5 overs to spare. The Shardul Thakur-led bowling attack restricted the hosts to 190, with Shardul Thakur picking up a four-fer (4 for 34) before Nicholas Pooran and Mitchell Marsh blew the hosts out of the water.
Pitch Report and Toss
Pitch Report : On an average 24 sixes have been hit per game, last game 30 sixes were hit, 528 runs were scored, you guessed it right, we are in Hyderabad. Talking about the dimensions, it isn’t that small. On my right it’s 69m, on my left it’s 67m and straight down the ground it’s a 79m hit. It’s a fresh pitch, the last game was on the other one, it had a bit more grass on it. This pitch is barren, it doesn’t have a blade of grass. Sounds very, very firm.
When I look at the good length area, it’s a bit abrasive, there are little cracks, I’m not saying the cracks are going to open up, it’s still is a very good pitch to bat on but once the ball gets older, it might be a bit slower on the bat. It’s a red soil pitch, so there will be bounce and carry but expect the pitch to slow down a bit once the ball gets older.
As far as dew is concerned, there wasn’t any in the last game, don’t expect it be to here either. So, batting first and piling up the runs is the way to go. Last season, this pitch was used in two games and in all four innings, more than 200 runs were scored. Expect a 200-plus total here as well but maybe not that 300 total, maybe not tonight, reckons Deep Dasgupta.
Toss : Lucknow Super Giants skipper Rishabh Pant have won the toss and opted to field with Avesh Khan returning in place of Shahbaz Ahmad in the Playing XI. Sunrisers Hyderabad skipper Pat Cummins batting first made no changes in the Playing XI.
Shardul Thakur’s career best 4-34 restricts powerful SRH batting to 190 for 9 in 20 overs
Having scored 286 in the last game, SRH were expected to continue from where they left off. But Thakur and Avesh Khan mixed up their lengths in their respective overs to keep the score down to 15 after two overs. Shardul Thakur then scalped Abhishek for the third time across seven T20s with a bouncer and followed it up by strangling centurion from the last game, Kishan, down the legside.
Shardul Thakur only missed his hattrick after Nitish Kumar Reddy dug out a yorker. Travis Head took on Avesh from the other end in an 18-run over as SRH began to wrestle back momentum. Head was given two lives in the sixth over after being dropped by Pooran and Ravi Bishnoi with a six over cover sandwiched in between.
LSG knew the only way to stop the marauding SRH batting unit was to take early wickets. Shardul Thakur went in search of swing in the first over but did not find success. But in his next over, he dismissed Abhishek and Ishan Kishan off successive balls. Abhishek pulled a short ball into the hands of deep square-leg, and Kishan was caught down the leg side.
LSG continued to be sloppy in the field Head after the PowerPlay as overthrows allowed SRH to scamper for three before Head cut Digvesh Rathi to the fence. Prince Yadav began poorly, being clipped through fine-leg for four before rattling the stumps of the dangerous Head, bringing LSG back in the game. Yadav, who bowled four on the trot, landed the ball right under the bat and mixed it up with wide slower-ball yorkers.
Head went after the returning Avesh Khan, hitting him for two sixes and a four in the fourth over. Two overs later, he tried to take on Ravi Bishnoi but ended up skying a slog sweep. Pooran, though, put the chance down at long-on. Four balls later, Bishnoi failed to latch on to a tough return catch. Head was on 35 at the time of the first drop but it cost LSG only 12 as Prince Yadav made a mess of Head’s stumps for his first wicket in the IPL.
He even got Heinrich Klaasen run-out backing up too far after Reddy drilled one back to him. This was after Klaasen slog-swept Rathi for a maximum and followed it up with a stunning backfoot punch off Bishnoi to the boundary. Things got better for the tourists as Bishnoi bowled a 105kmph ball to have Reddy cleaned up but just when they tried to close out the 15th over Aniket Verma let loose. Having hit Bishnoi down the ground in the 13th over, Verma punished Bishnoi for bowling in the slot with two more sixes in a 15-run 15th over.
Nitish Kumar Reddy and Heinrich Klaasen took SRH past 100 in the 11th over before Klaasen was run out in bizarre fashion. Nitish hit a full toss from Prince to the bowler’s left. Prince failed to hold on to the catch, but the ball found a way to ricochet on to the stumps at the non-striker’s end with Klaasen well outside his crease. Soon after, Bishnoi castled Nitish for 32 off 28, leaving SRH in a spot.
In keeping with the SRH team ethos, the batters kept attacking. But while they kept hitting sixes, they also kept getting out. Aniket Verma smashed Bishnoi for back-to-back sixes and repeated it against Digvesh Rathi in the following over before getting out for 36 off 13 balls. Cummins walked out at No. 8, hit the first three balls he faced for three sixes, and was out on the fourth. That took SRH to 180 for 8 after 18 overs. However, only ten runs came from the last two.
Verma continued his onslaught with back-to-back sixes off Rathi, but the bowler had the last laugh as Verma holed out to long-off after a 13-ball 36. Abhinav Manohar fell cheaply off Shardul Thakur. SRH skipper Pat Cummins played a short yet effective cameo off three sixes in his four-ball stay at the middle. Shardul Thakur then picked up his fourth on the night, with the wicket of Mohammed Shami, as he ended with career-best figures of 4 for 34 as LSG successfully restricted Sunrisers below 200.
Nicholas Pooran, Mitchell Marsh give SRH a taste of their own medicine as LSG wins by 5 wickets
Abhishek began with a quiet three-run over, an anomaly in a gruesome PowerPlay for the hosts. Despite Shami sending Aiden Markram back for one, he followed it up with five-wides while, impact sub, Mitchell Marsh broke the shackles with a flick over mid-wicket to the fence. Pooran wasted no time to get going, with two sixes on the onside off Simarjeet Singh after Reddy misfielded one on the boundary ropes at the start of the over.
Mohammed Shami removed Aiden Markram in the second over of the chase, but Pooran took the attack to the opposition as soon as he walked out. His first boundary came via a misfield before he smoked Simarjeet Singh over deep midwicket twice in two balls. Bringing on a left-arm orthodox spinner with Pooran in the middle is always risky. But Cummins took that gamble with Abhishek. Pooran faced only two balls from him and slog-swept both for sixes. He has now hit seven sixes off nine balls against Abhishek in T20 cricket.
He then gave a half-chance to the extra cover fielder in the next over but the power of the drive took the ball past the fielder and to the fence. Marsh, then picked the bones out of Shami with two sixes in an 18-run over. The move to turn back to Abhishek backfired for the hosts with Pooran, who has a great record against the left-arm spinner smashing two sixes as LSG brought up the 50 within five overs. Pooran ended the PowerPlay with two boundaries off Cummins as he raced to 44.
He didn’t spare legspinner Adam Zampa either, hitting him for two sixes and a four in the seventh over. Off the first 20 balls he faced, he hit five fours and six sixes.
The hosts brought in Adam Zampa as their impact sub but Pooran slog-swept him for six as the southpaw brought up his 50 off just 18 balls, the fastest so far in this year’s IPL. The Zampa over resulted in 19 runs for LSG as the tourists continued to blow the hosts away. Harshal Patel followed it up with a nine-ball 15-run over as the partnership went past the 100-run mark. The hosts finally saw the back of Pooran courtesy Cummins thudding a fuller delivery into his pads.
Marsh was on 37 off 22 balls when Pooran got out. He had hit Shami for two straight sixes in the powerplay. In the 11th over, he hit Cummins for back-to-back fours to bring up his fifty off 29 balls. Cummins had him caught at long-on soon after but it was too late.
Marsh brought up his second 50 on the bounce with consecutive boundaries off Cummins before he chipped one to long-on. Simarjeet was welcomed back to the attack with a six by Rishabh Pant while Ayush Badoni rounded the over with a four. But the latter fell to a stunning take by Harshal, who ran in from the mid-wicket boundary, in the next over as the hosts tried to fight back.
At the end of 11 overs, LSG needed only 53. They did lose Rishabh Pant and Ayush Badoni along the way, but their victory was never in doubt. Samad, a former SRH player, smashed an unbeaten 22 off eight balls to complete the formalities.
The optimism around the ground increased when Harshal had Pant caught at third-man, but former SRH player Abdul Samad ended the 15th over with a four and a six leaving LSG requiring only 15 runs in the death overs. Samad continued to power the ball as he latched into the off-colour Zampa, with a six and a four before David Miller finished proceedings. The South African played a lofted drive through covers for four as LSG won with 23 balls to spare.
Presentations and Road Ahead
Pat Cummins the losing SRH skipper said : It was a different wicket the other day, but we had to score quickly. They batted really well though. Still a very good wicket, that was the best wicket in the world, this was the second-best wicket. It gripped a little bit, but it was a nice wicket. Every time it’s a fresh game, they bowled really well, it was very well planned. It was a pretty good effort to get to 190.
You always need one person to bat throughout the innings, like Ishan (Kishan) did the other day, but they bowled really well, never let us off the hook. We got 8 batters, it’s about going out there and making an impact. You see things you could have done better, that could have been the difference. It’s a long competition, we will get a chance pretty quickly, so we need to move on.
Rishabh Pant the winning LSG skipper said : Big relief but as a team we talk about the process. It’s not about getting too high when you win and not about getting too low when you lose. As a team, we can’t focus on uncontrollable, my mentor said focus on controllables and that is what I did.
Good to see the way Prince bowled and also Thakur was really good. (On Pooran batting at No. 3) I think we just want to give freedom to him. You got to give someone the charge when he is batting well and he has batted brilliantly for us. The group is coming up nicely, we haven’t played our best so far but happy to get a win.
Shardul Thakur Player of the Match for his career best4-34 in the IPL said : (On whether he thought he would be playing in the IPL this season after not getting picked in the auction) Honestly, no but I had made my plans. I also planned to play county cricket if I was not picked in the IPL. Zaheer Khan had called me when I was playing in the Ranji Trophy and he told me that you may be called in as a potential replacement so don’t switch yourself off.
If you are called in as a replacement, you are likely to start. Ups and downs are a part of life. I have always backed my skills. Some swing and what I have seen in the past, Head and Abhishek love to take their chances so I thought I will take my chances as well.
New ball is a thing where you can take wickets when it’s swinging and I took my chances tonight. Bowlers get very little in these kinds of matches, even in the last game I said that pitches should be prepared in a way the game especially hangs in the balance. With the impact sub rule coming in, it’s unfair on the bowlers if a team scores 240-250 runs.
Before the match, many expected Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) to post the first 300-plus total in IPL history. There were reasons to justify the speculation. After a record-breaking IPL 2024, SRH had posted 286 for 6 in their IPL 2025 opener, also in Hyderabad, and Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) were without at least two of their first-choice bowlers.
Forget 300, SRH could not even score 200. They managed only 190 for 9 with Shardul Thakur picking up 4 for 34, his best figures in the IPL. Still, 190 was not a small total. But Nicholas Pooran made it look minuscule. He smashed 70 off just 26 balls, hitting six fours and as many sixes. By the time Pat Cummins had him lbw, LSG needed only 71 from 68 balls.
Mitchell Marsh, who played second fiddle to Pooran while they were together, also scored a fifty before Abdul Samad applied the finishing touches. LSG chasing down their target with 23 balls and five wickets to spare was giving SRH a taste of their own medicine. Last season, Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma had taken just 9.4 overs to chase down LSG’s 165 at this very venue.
There were regular wickets through SRH’s innings. Thakur picked up two quick wickets of Abhishek Sharma and Ishan Kishan after the hosts failed to get off to a flying start. The rest of the LSG bowlers consistently followed Thakur with tight lines and bowled under the bat as they broke through the host’s batting order. In contrast, LSG dealt majorly in boundaries through the Pooran-Marsh show, and the second-wicket 116-run stand in just over seven overs completely took the game away from Sunrisers.
It has been a blazing run-chase from LSG to notch up their first win this season. Few eyebrows were raised when Pant inserted SRH into bat especially with the hosts having scored a mammoth 286 in the first innings against RR at this venue in the last game but the visitors have come out trumps with all guns blazing. Head played a breezy cameo and there were a few decent contributions from the SRH middle-order as well but they needed someone to score big.
The field placements from LSG were on point and the bowlers stuck to their plans to restrict the hosts to an under-par score on a terrific batting surface. In reply, Markram fell early but Pooran came out with a lot of intent and smashed the bowlers all around the ground. Marsh also joined in the party and the runs kept coming at a canter for LSG.
The 116-run stand off just 43 balls between the duo almost killed the game. Both Pooran and Marsh struck back-to-back fifties and the damage was done. Although both fell in quick succession to Cummins and the visitors lost a a couple of more wickets in a bid to finish the game early, the game was all but done and dusted by then. Samad played a quickfire cameo to take his side home with 23 balls to spare.
Shardul Thakur was not meant to spend the summer of 2025 travelling the length and breadth of India fulfilling content commitments and playing franchise cricket. After toiling for Mumbai in whites at the Ranji Trophy till the third week of February, the mercurial all-rounder was to take in the cool climes of Essex in South East England for his first-ever County stint in April-May. But then came a phone call from Zaheer Khan that altered the course.
LSG were led to this desperate situation after mass injuries bogged them down even before the season began. Mohsin Khan was out for the season, Avesh Khan was a doubtful starter, Akash Deep was rehabilitating and their INR 11 Crore retention Mayank Yadav was nursing another injury that would keep him out for a while. So, LSG broke glass for emergency, and found themselves reaching out to the previously unfancied Shardul Thakur.
Going for experience added up for LSG, whose few fully fit pace options were still wet behind the ears. But that Shardul Thakur was even available to be such a replacement player was the more intriguing aspect of the whole exercise. Sunrisers will now travel to Vizag to face the Delhi Capitals in an afternoon clash on March 30 (Sunday) while the Lucknow Super Giants have a four-day break before playing their first home game against the Punjab Kings on April 1 (Tuesday).
SRH had hammered LSG last season at home on the back of stellar knocks from Abhishek and Head. On this occasion, LSG gave the hosts a taste of their own medicine with a blistering batting performance as Pooran and Marsh stole the limelight. There have been talks of breaching the 300-run mark in the SRH camp at home but they even failed to go past 200 tonight.
It’s said that “You live by the sword, you die by the sword.” Taking the dynamic nature of T20s into consideration, it calls for a more flexible approach and you have to hold your horses at times especially when the flow of the game is against you. Tomorrow, the Indian Premier League caravan moves back to Chennai – that’s the only venue so far this season which has produced an even contest between bat and ball. Tight contests are always exciting to watch and let’s hope tomorrow’s game between CSK and RCB lives up to the billing.