Rajasthan Royals defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad with 4 wickets and 3 balls to spare in the Game 04 of IPL 2014 at Sheikh Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi. It was a low scoring match and bowlers of both the teams played quite brilliantly to provide us a nail-biting match.
Rajasthan Royals captain Shane Watson won the toss and decided to bowl first. The underrated Indian fast bowler gave RR a dream start by dismissing the dangerous batsman Aaron Finch for just 2 in the very first over of tonight’s match. But after that the SRH skipper Shikhar Dhawan (38 runs in 34 balls) and Australian David Warner (32 runs in 35 balls) batted with nerve and formed a good partnership 75 odd runs.
However, this duo had to depend exclusively on ones and twos as it was really difficult to produce boundaries due to some real quality bowling from the RR bowlers. SRH managed to score only 69/1 in their first 10 overs. Their batsmen managed to hit only 4 boundaries and 1 six in the last five overs, eventually the Hyderabad team put up 133/6 in their quota of 20 overs.For the Rajasthan Royals medium pacer Rajat Bhatia, fast bowler Dhawal Kulkarni and Kane Richardson shared two wickets each for their team.
While defending this low total SRH team needed a good spell from their star bowler Dale Steyn, and eventually he bowled really well at the beginning overs, and it was troubling the top order batsmen of Rajasthan Royals. Steyn took the wicket of Nayar in the first over of his spell, and the wonder boy Sanju Samson and the captain Shane Watson didn’t manage to score big for RR.
Due to smart bowling by the SRH bowlers in the initial overs Rajasthan team was reduced to only 31/3 after 6.2 overs, and then opener Ajinkya Rahane (59 runs of 53 balls) and Stuart Binny (48 runs in 32 balls) held their nerves and formed a great partnership to help RR to edge pass the total runs put up by the Sunrisers team. They added crucial 77 runs in their 4th wicket partnership, but then suddenly Rahane got out in the hands of Amit Mishra at the 16th over, and it brought Hyderabad right back into the game. Both Dale Steyn and Amit Mishra took two wickets each and bowled beautifully.
RR needed 17 odd runs from their last two overs, and then Dale Steyn came into attack. He conceded 9 runs at that over and managed to take the wicket of Rajat Bhatia. RR was left with 8 runs to score to win the game from the remaining 6 balls. James Faulkner smashed two back to back boundaries of Bhubaneswar Kumar’s last over, and claimed the victory for his team.
Ajinkya Rahane was chosen the
Man of the Match for his outstanding half century. He was dropped on 8 by Aaron Finch, and later it became the turning point of the match. Check out the various
awards given in this 4th IPL T20 match like Yes Bank Maximum Sixes, Kanna keep calm award.