Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) captain David Warner said that they need to hit more boundaries and sixes after they succumbed to their second defeat in as many matches in this season’s Indian Premier League on Saturday.
“We have to try and go harder at the top. Can’t help if the bowlers are bowling good lines and lengths, we need to push as hard as we can,” said Warner on Star Sports after the match.
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“You can see from our running between the wickets, we do that but we got to improve our boundary percentage. I saw, I think 35 dot balls, which not acceptable in T20 cricket on a wicket that was actually nice to bat on. We just mis-executed in the middle.”
Warner had chosen to bat first after winning the toss, the first captain to do so this year. SRH only managed to score 142 runs despite losing only four wickets in 20 overs but Warner said that he sticks by his decision at the toss.
“For us, our strength is death bowling. I thought it was actually a difficult wicket to accelerate on. The Kolkata boys showed us that if you can keep wickets at the end, that’s what wins you games. I don’t regret what I did at the beginning of the game and I stick by my decision,” he said.
“Pat Cummins, as he does, (bowled) Test match line and length. There was a little bit of movement here and there. All in all, it got harder through the middle. We went four or five overs for 20 and coming back with three wickets in hand at the end probably killed us a little bit there. An extra 30 or 40 runs would have been great,” said Warner.
Young Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) batsman Shubman Gill on Saturday played an unbeaten innings of 70 runs to help his team in registering their first win of the ongoing season of the IPL in the UAE.
Chasing 143, KKR rode on the 92-run partnership between Gill and Eoin Morgan (42 not out) to beat Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi.
After losing opener Sunil Narine for a duck in the second over, KKR had gained some momentum with the quickfire 13-ball knocks of 26 runs from Nitish Rana. But the left-handed batsman departed in the fifth over to put KKR at 43/2.
KKR skipper Dinesh Karthik followed Rana and continued on his disastrous form with the bat as be got out in the seventh over. His team were lurking at 53/3 when Gill and and Morgan steadied the ship.
In their partnership, Gill hit five fours and two sixes while Morgan hit three fours and two sixes.