IPL 2024: Shahbaz Ahmed, Abhishek Sharma spin SRH into the final

Sunrisers Hyderabad booked their place in the Indian Premier League (IPL) final after beating Rajasthan Royals by 36 runs in the second qualifier at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai on Friday. SRH, the 2016 champions, are into the final for the first time since 2018 and a year after finishing bottom of the pyramid.

Sunrisers Hyderabad will take on Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL final on Sunday at the same venue.

Having been put into bat, SRH scored 175 runs with Henrich Klaasen scoring a 34-ball fifty in the middle order. There were contributions at the top of the order by Travis Head (34 off 28 balls) and Rahul Tripathi (37 off 15 balls) to help the team to a fighting total.

In reply, Rajasthan Royals saw serious contributions only from Yashasvi Jaiswal (42 off 21 balls) and Dhruv Jurel (56 off 35 balls) with only two other batters reaching double digits (10 each for Tom Kohler-Cadmore and Sanju Samson) to be stopped short on 139/7.

From a comfortable 65/1 in 7.4 overs, it suddenly became 79/5 by the end of the 12th over. RR’s effort to scale the 176 run target was more or less shut down when three wickets - Riyan Parag, R Ashwin and Shimron Hetmyer - fell in the space of 13 runs and 15 balls.

Spinners Shahbaz Ahmed and Abhishek Sharma did the job with the ball for SRH with figures of 3/23 and 2/24. Their combined figures of 5 for 47 completely overshadowed the celebrated duo of R Ashwin (0/43 in 4 overs) and Yuzvendra Chahal (0/34 in 4 overs), who gave away 77 runs in their quota of overs.

Abhishek, who had bowled only three overs in 15 games before Friday night, got the ball to dip and turn while Shahbaz’s deliveries gripped and one such saw the back of Samson, who waited for an eternity to pull over the cow corner.

Samson’s failure on a day when it mattered might not help his cause in getting a place in India’s playing XI at the T20 World Cup. The Royals captain’s failures on big days have been his biggest undoing and the team would have expected bigger things.

Jaiswal and Parag also couldn’t simply get the distance as the ball stopped on them. With humidity around 80 percent, absence of dew only made matters worse.

In the first half, the Royals bowling could be segregated into three distinct parts despite Klaasen’s half-century which had four maximums.

Trent Boult (3/45) started the slide in the powerplay overs, Sandeep choked the ‘Orange Army’ in the middle overs while Avesh Khan was menacing at the death (3/27).

But it was the canny Sandeep Sharma (2/25 in 4 overs), who took pace off his deliveries as Sunrisers batters were literally ‘Short Third-Manned’ with four batters failing to clear the fielder stationed at the edge of the 30-yard circle.

Chahal manning the slot took three catches while Ashwin also got one at the same position.

Aiden Markram’s re-entry in playing XI didn’t pay dividends as he was out slashing at short third-man. However with Klaasen for company, SRH were clawing back at 99 for 3 when Head paid for his profligacy with Sandeep rolling his fingers over.

Klaasen understood that the ball wasn’t coming onto the bat and only went for the jugular to the deliveries that were in his arc as he got one of his better half-centuries in difficult conditions before a slower delivery on the blockhole rattled the furniture.