Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Kings XI Punjab, 25th Match

SRH 132/6 (20 Ovs)

KXIP 119/10 (19.2 Ovs)

Sunrisers Hyderabad won by 13 runs

PLAYER OF THE MATCH
Ankit Rajpoot

Irrespective of the toss, SRH should just start bowling as soon as the umpire calls 'play' At least that way we will see more early finishes and less panic. Not that anyone anticipates such moments, but blimey! SRH have a factory of bowlers. Fast, spin, medium pace doesn't matter. They just have the 'know-how' to pick wickets. And when you have bowlers like that, Williamson can snuggle his pillow and stop turning up for batting practice. Absolutely brimming with confidence, the SRH side. Righto! That's that for tonight. Tomorrow we have DD taking on KKR. A must win for DD. Do join us for that in few hours time. Until then, good night and goodbye from Raju Peethala, Sagar Chawla, Pradeep Krishnamurthy, Srivathsa, Varun Dixit and our scorer Shashikant Singh.Cheers!!

All out totals after a 50+ opening stand
119 KXIP v SRH, Hyderabad, 2018 (55)
154 KXIP v GL, Rajkot, 2016 (65)
154 GL v SRH, Kanpur, 2017 (111)
161 GL v RPS, Pune, 2017 (55)
165 DC v RCB, Hyderabad, 2008 (101)
173 MI v DD, Mumbai WS, 2014 (87)

Best figures in losing causes in IPL
6/19 A Zampa v SRH, 2016
5/14 A Rajpoot v SRH, 2018
5/16 J Faulkner v SRH, 2013
5/19 S Narine v KXIP, 2012
5/21 M Patel v KXIP, 2011

Ankit Rajpoot - the best bowling [5/14] figures by an uncapped player in IPL - gets the Man of the Matchaward: It isn't an easy job. Everyone practice hard and we practice a lot before the games. The wicket was offering a bit of help early on and I made sure I used my variations and hit the right lengths. I had planned early on about which areas to bowl and it all worked out well. It was my day today and thankfully I got a fifer. (*Roughly translated from Hindi*)

Williamson, SRH skipper: We haven't really played on surfaces that are 180s and 190s. We wanted more from our batters, and today 150-160 would have been a competitive total. The Kings XI bowled really, really well, but the boys fought really hard. It's nice to be able to defend these totals. We didn't bowl well in the powerplay, but we did well to squeeze it towards the end. We want to be a little bit smarter with the bat. It's about getting 145s and 155s on these kind of surfaces. Competitive totals on these kind of surfaces. The bowlers have been operating very well, they know their roles very well. We are fortunate with our bowling depth. Very lucky to have the local talent. Some good tough decisions to make going into the next few matches. You always want more, but the boys have been fantastic in the way they fought with the ball especially on this kind of a pitch. We want to maintain the same trend for the rest of the tournament. Yes! (it is a difficult surface to bat)

Rashid Khan: It was tough to come back after those two bad games (against CSK and KXIP). It's a part of cricket, the team support was amazing, they just told me to go there and enjoy myself. I don't know (about the plan to bowl him after the powerplay), it's up to the skipper, whenever he wanted me to bowl, I was ready. Getting KL's wicket was great, he's a class player, one of my favourites, the plan was to bowl wicket-to-wicket, mix up my lengths. It gives a lot of confidence defending small totals, with our bowling - we can defend any total, the guys did a wonderful job in the last two games. The fielding was excellent, but we need more runs from the batsmen. The wickets in the last two games wasn't easy, in the next few games, I think they will get more runs.

Ashwin - From where we were we should have really put this game away. It is disappointing. It was not the greatest of wickets and we succumbed to it. These losses can happen in this format and these sort of games do happen in IPL, we have to move on. We need to address our fielding. It is always difficult to catch under the lights but there are no excuses, we are professional cricketers and we have to put it behind and work harder. This 7 days gap is good for us, we will try to regroup and come back stronger. Rashid bowled really well, he is a world class bowler and we lost wickets against him in the middle overs.

23:37 Local Time, 18:07 GMT, 23:37 IST: At 55/0, KXIP were cruising, but then Rashid Khan found a way to sneak through Rahul's defences and that's it...Out of nowhere, the pitch started looking like a minefield, at least KXIP batters definitely made it seem like one; They kept playing rash shots and gifted wickets in clusters, and the result? Lost 10 wickets for 64 runs and missed out on claiming the top spot in the table. Rashid Khan was too good. A lot of credit must go to Williamson, who despite defending a low total, held back Rashid for the latter stages. And that, I guess, made a massive difference. The rest of the bowlers garnished Rashid's efforts and vindicated the tag of the 'best bowling side' of this IPL.