IPL 2016: For Sunrisers Hyderabad, pace is ace

For the third successive game, Sunrisers Hyderabad have won with their five-pronged seam attack. Teams struggling with bowling this IPL, like Royal Challengers Bangalore and Rising Pune Supergiants, will be looking at the SRH with envy.

Irrespective of the conditions, one makes you think that SRH’s seam attack of Ashish Nehra, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Barinder Sran, Moises Henriques and Mustafizur Rahman will bail the team out.

That’s what they did on Sunday here when they dismissed Mumbai Indians to under 100 and win by 85 runs.

Click here for the full coverage of the IPL 2016, including commentary, fixtures, scorecards and more

Shikhar Dhawan, who top-scored with the bat for Sunrisers Hyderabad with an unbeaten 82 – and Mumbai Indians collectively scored 10 more than the left-handed opener – said that his team is not heavily reliant on the ‘fearsome five’.

“I feel we have got a good bunch of bowling unit. And things are working for us, and especially it is captain’s and support staff’s call what 11 they want to choose. Of course, we have got a very great fast bowling unit. When there is no turn on the wicket, I feel it is better to play fast bowlers. When we play on turners, we have got spinners who can always get into the 11,” Dhawan said after the match on Sunday.

He was particularly amazed by the Bangladeshi left-arm medium-pacer Rahman and called him a bowler “with great sense of bowling”.

“He is quite a talented bowler. From Day One, he has made an impact in international cricket and he is maintaining it. You can see the quality of his slower ones, bouncers, yorkers. He has got all kinds of deliveries. The best part is even if he is new to international cricket, he backs himself, backs his ability and that, I feel, works for him,” Dhawan said of Rahman, who has taken 13 wickets at 6.15 economy rate and 15.61 average in his maiden IPL season.

About his own match-winning knock and the partnership first with David Warner and later with Yuvraj Singh, Dhawan said: “Of course, it is very good because he (Warner) is leading from the front and for the first six overs, he is the aggressor for us. That gives me time to settle on the wicket. It is always good when the captain is leading from the front and the boys look up to him. And, he creates energy on the field as he is one of the best fielders too.

“Once we (Yuvraj Singh and I) settled down. Yuvipaaji played amazingly well and the way he was striking the ball, his knock made a huge difference to reach our total. When Yuvipaaji started to strike, we decided to change gears and go after the bowlers. By then, I stayed long enough in the middle and knew what the bowler was going to do. It worked in my favour.”

Demoralising defeat: Pollard 

Meanwhile, Mumbai Indians all-rounder Kieron Pollard termed his team’s loss as “demoralising”. He said: “Let’s sum it up and say they (SRH) had a better game than us. They did well in all three departments and we faltered in all three departments. We don’t want to go into ‘they bowled better’ and things like that. As Mumbai Indians players, it is not about the opposition. It is about us and we do what is needed to win a cricket game. At the end of the day, we lost, it was a demoralising defeat and we are terribly disappointed. All the guys are disappointed in the dressing room and we need to pick ourselves up and come confidently in the next game.”

Pollard said that the 85-run loss was one of those kinds that the team wanted to forget. “To be honest, you can find many faults with these sort of games. At the end of the day, we come to play cricket, we come to give 100 per cent. Today (Sunday) is one of the games where you don’t want to pinpoint anything. You want to actually forget because this is the backend of the tournament and you need the guys confident. You don’t need guys with their heads down now. You don’t need guys to be playing the blame game at this point in time. This is one game you just have to forget.”

Pollard looked forward to Mumbai Indians’ next game “on a good batting track in Bengaluru” (on May 11) and looked at the positive side of this defeat.

“Even if you look back last year as well, we were on a momentum. We had to win all our games after we were actually demolished by AB de Villiers at the Wankhede. We forgot it and came back strong. There are a lot of experienced guys in that dressing room, experienced enough to know how to deal with such losses. What we want now is guys with confidence, guys with their heads held up towards the backend of the tournament and bounce back stronger as a team.”