Sunrisers Hyderabad posted their third win of Pepsi IPL 2015 after they defeated hosts Kings XI Punjab by 20 runs at the PCA Stadium in Mohali. After setting a modest target of 151, SRH kept pegging away wickets and restricted the hosts to 130. The result meant SRH now have six points from seven outings, while KXIP, who have now lost all their four home matches, remained at the floor of the table.

Earlier in the day, the home team captain George Bailey won the toss and put the visitors in. Apart from SRH captain David Warner, the rest of the SRH batsmen struggled to cope with the two-paced surface. The visitors got off to a poor start; Warner batted out a maiden first up, after which Shikhar Dhawan miscued an attempted pull and was caught by the wicket-keeper in the second over.

While the rest of the batsmen found it difficult to get a hang of the pace on the pitch, Warner batted beautifully, taking full toll of the pace of the bowlers. He opened his account with a boundary that came off the outside edge of his bat, but thereafter played some delightful strokes. He was severe on Mitchell Johnson and Sandeep Sharma, picking up nine boundaries and a six off KXIP’s new-ball pair, scoring 45 runs off 25 balls he faced against them. The left-hander was dismissed in the tenth over after he’d contributed 58 of the team’s 76 runs on the board when he attempted to hit Axar Patel over long on but didn’t get enough elevation and found the man patrolling the ropes.

As has been the case with SRH right through the season, the middle order struggled yet again. Moises Henriques, who was included in the XI in place of Dale Steyn, scored 30 from 32 balls, while Naman Ojha made 28 from 26 balls. SRH finished their twenty overs at 150 for 6 with Ashish Reddy (who found a place in the XI at the expense of KL Rahul) providing the late overs fireworks. There were three partnerships of 20 runs or more, but none of them were converted to a big stand; the highest partnership of the innings was the 46-run association between Hanuma Vihari (9 from 8 balls) and Warner.

For KXIP, the spin bowlers had a field day. Axar Patel, bowling his left-arm spin, returned with figures of two for 25 from his overs, while Murali Vijay, rolled his arm over to good effect, conceding only sixteen in his three overs. Sandeep Sharma and Johnson were among the wickets too, but they were expensive on the day, finishing with figures of 1 for 35 and 2 for 39 respectively.

Cut to the run-chase, Manan Vohra (who was included in the XI at the expense of Virender Sehwag) would be the first casualty when he dragged a Trent Boult away swinger back onto his stumps. Shaun Marsh was dismissed in the same manner in the following over, but this time the beneficiary was Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

Murali Vijay and George Bailey kept the visitors at bay for a brief period, adding 32 runs in 4.2 overs. Bailey welcomed Praveen Kumar into the attack hitting him for three boundaries as KXIP finished their six Powerplay overs at 36 for 2.

But the dismissals of three of the main batsmen – Vijay, Bailey and David Miller – in the next five overs knocked the chase off the rails. Bailey holed out to mid off, Vijay was run out, while Miller was beaten by leg-spinner in the air by Karn Sharma and found the man patrolling the long off boundary.

For a brief while it appeared, Wriddhiman Saha and Axar Patel, who got together with their team needing 79 runs from 46 balls, would rescue their team. But when both batsmen were packed off by Boult in the eighteenth over, the match had decidedly swung in favour of the visitors.

Saha made 42 from 33 balls, while Axar made 17 from 13 balls; the pair added 44 runs in 4.5 overs. Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Praveen Kumar conceded only seven runs in the final two overs to restrict the hosts to 130 for 9.

Trent Boult was fantastic; after bowling a miserly first spell of 3-0-12-1, the Kiwi pacer returned to bowl a fantastic 18th over – in which he only conceded seven runs and picked up two key wickets. Bhuvneshwar Kumar returned figures of two for 23, while Karn Sharma and Moises Henriques picked up a wicket each.

Brief Scores

Sunrisers Hyderabad 150-6 in 20.0 Overs (David Warner 58, Axar Patel 2-25) beat Kings XI Punjab 130-9 in 20.0 Overs (Wriddhiman Saha 42, Trent Boult 3-19)