Sunrisers Hyderabad finally broke free of the Chennai curse, winning their first-ever game at Chepauk with as many as five wickets to spare. They were able to rewrite history thanks to an incredible all-round show from Kamindu Mendis and Harshal Patel’s four-wicket onslaught.
On a Chepauk deck where batting was no picnic, SRH opted to choose discipline over drama to not let things slip through their fingers.
Harshal ran through the CSK lineup despite Brevis’ reviving attempts
Chennai, sent in to bat first, swerved to the fast lane despite losing a wicket on the very first ball. Ayush Mhatre, CSK’s teenage prodigy, looked nothing like a rookie playing only his second game. He drove through the off side, pulled the ball towards the leg, beat the mid-on fielder, sent it over the bowler’s head, all within his short stay, guiding Chennai past 35 runs in just four overs. But the momentum fizzled out soon.
SRH started banging in short, forcing CSK’s young batters and Sam Curran, after them, to find reprieve on the leg side. The results, however, were quite ugly. Curran holed out, Mhatre miscued a drive, and just like that, the home team was three men down by the end of the sixth.
In came Dewald Brevis, and for a few overs, he lit up Chepauk. Playing in place of Rachin Ravindra, he batted with the poise and timing that ensured “Baby AB” was more than just a moniker for him. He thumped Kamindu Mendis for three sixes in the twelfth over.
But as magically as Brevis’ show started, it ended within a moment. High on the sixes euphoria after treating Harshal Patel for a six over extra cover, Brevis wanted to go airborne again, only to find Kamindu stationed at long-off. Mendis ran, lunged as far to the left as he could, and grabbed the ball with one hand mid-air. Only a catch as good as this one could have been a befitting end to Brevis’ innings.
But after that, CSK got on a downward spiral. Pat Cummins and Harshal bowled with a Test-match-like frugality by swinging the ball and denying boundaries. 154 was all that they could put on the board after not being allowed a single six in the last five overs.
Dew and SRH middle order walk over CSK
Soon began the nervy chase. Hyderabad’s chase wasn’t without bumps, but what helped them outdo CSK was that they were smarter than they have been this season so far. They lost Abhishek Sharma to a duck. Travis Head looked in good spirits but was knocked over by an Anshul Kamboj off-cutter. And what felt like the last nail in the coffin at that time came when Heinrich Klaasen departed in the ninth over, much to the Chennai crowd’s glee, who played as the twelfth man for CSK.
Ishan Kishan, whose form has not had much to write home about since his century in the first game, played cautiously, all while on the lookout for rhythm to start firing. He did get the flow he needed, but that was cut short with a grab from Sam Curran on the leg side.
SRH were 106 for 5 by the end of 14 overs, and the game was teetering on a thread, looking exactly like a classic low-scoring thriller!
Right then, SRH’s sixth-wicket pair, Kamindu and Nitish Kumar Reddy, decided to turn things their way. They didn’t go for the perfectly timed hits. They didn’t look to land the ball in the stands either. Merely timed the ball, ran as hard between the wickets as they could, and left the rest to the dew.
Just like that, they managed a 49-run stand between them. SRH were home with eight balls to spare and five wickets still in hand, and ticked off their first win in Chennai.
