Rajasthan Royals won the match against the Sunrisers Hyderabad at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad
All new Sunrisers Hyderabad and Rajasthan Royals versions are set to face each other for their IPL 2024 opening match at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad. Where Sunrisers won the toss and chose to field first while hoping to become the fourth team to register a win on their home ground. Rajasthan Royals were the finalists in the last season and would be looking to maintain the same royal approach. The match started with a minute silence in respect to the former Indian Cricketer late Salim Aziz Durani who passed away earlier in the day.
Jos Buttler and Yashasvi Jaiswal gave a fantastic opening for the royals which led them to make the highest-ever total in the powerplay for their team in which they made 85 runs by losing just 1 wicket. Buttler was playing as if he carried the same momentum from the last IPL season wherein he won the Orange cap (Highest run-getter) in the tournament. He played very impactfully powerful innings of 54 runs from just 22 balls with a strike rate of 245.45. He was accompanied by the youngster batter Yashasvi Jaiswal who was playing an equally important and powerful knock from the other end. He too made 54 runs in 37 balls with a strike rate of 145.95.
Then came in the Royal’s Skipper Sanju Samson who too came in and started hitting the ball right from the start. It was an amazing view for the audience present at the stadium there, although they are playing at the home ground of Hyderabad but were dominating the match right from the start. Samson added valuable 55 runs in 32 balls with a strike rate of 171.88.
From the bowling perspective, the Sunrisers Hyderabad were not that strong which was very evident from the beginning but still Fazalhaq Farooqi and T Natarajan were able to take 2-2 wickets each in their 4 and 3-over spells respectively. Umran Malik took one wicket. And all other bowlers including their stand-in skipper Bhuvneshwar Kumar remained wicketless. This helped the Royals to put up a giant total of 203/5 giving the target of 204 runs in 20 overs.
The second innings started in a promising way because of Mayank Agarwal but it went down as soon as it started, courtesy goes to Trent Bolt. He claimed 2 wickets and a maiden over whereas Ravichandran Ashwin and Jason Holder took 1-1 wickets each. Yuzvendra Chahal took 4 wickets becoming the most economical bowler for the Rajasthan Royals. Sunrisers Hyderabad was struggling right from the start against the Royals and the wickets were falling off sooner than expected.
With this new rule of the Impact player, Abdul Samad for the Sunrisers Hyderabad and Navdeep Saini for the Rajasthan Royals got to play the match as replacements for Fazalhaq Farooqi and Yashasvi Jaiswal respectively. But the new rule wasn’t been as useful for the Sunrisers as expected. Their top order collapsed very soon and then the middle over was too not that great. This is something they might want to work on.
Rajasthan Royals won the match by 72 runs. Jos Buttler was awarded the Player of the match. Sunrisers Hyderabad’s collapsed batting line-up would be a huge concern for them going forward in the tournament. Maybe the changes would be seen in their next match against Lucknow Super Giants which will happen on 7th April 2024 at Ekana Sports City, Lucknow. The saga of winning in the home ground in the tournament has been broken.
