The Australian power hitter Glenn Maxwell yet again helped his team Kings XI Punjab to smash Sunrisers Hyderabad by a huge 72 runs in the 9th Match of IPL 2014 played at Sharjah Cricket Stadium, UAE.
Shikhar Dhawan, the captain of SRH team, won the toss and elected to field considering the fact that the Punjab team is really well in chasing targets by “Max-Miller” show.
The Punjab Team started their innings quite well with their opening duo Virender Sehwag (30 runs, 22 balls) and Cheteshwar Pujara (35 runs, 32 balls). The star leg spinner of SRH team, Amit Mishra took the wicket of dangerous Sehwag on the 7th over. After that Maxwell joined the party and smashed almost all the bowlers. He scored 95 runs in just 43 balls while hitting five boundaries and 9 sixes. Sadly, he missed his century yet again.
Maxwell was at his very best in this game, and he particularly attacked Amit Mishra. He hit three successive sixes off Mishra’s bowling in 13th over. However, his partner David Miller failed to deliver in this match and was able to make only 10 runs off 10 balls before getting out on the bowling of Bhubaneswar Kumar. Earlier in the match David Warner dropped the crucial catch of Maxwell when he was on just 11. Finally KXIP managed to score 193/6 after 20 overs of their innings.
The star bowler of SRH team Dale Steyn failed to take wickets in this game, but he bowled well and conceded only 26 runs in his quota of 4 overs. But Bhubaneswar Kumar bowled beautifully and took 3 major wickets. His bowling stat was like this, 4-0-19-3.
While chasing such big target, the SRH team never looked confident, and eventually they lost their Skipper Shikhar Dhawan (1 runs, 3 balls) in 2nd over. David Warner (8 runs, 12 balls) and Aaron Finch (19 runs, 15 balls) tried to build a partnership, but neither of them succeeded to do that effectively. At the very start of the innings the Sunrisers team found themselves in deep trouble, as they were at 33/3 after first 5 overs.
After that the Hyderabad team kept loosing wicket and none of their batsmen managed to deliver match winning performance for the team. Balaji was the star bowler for KXIP in this match, as his bowling figure was 4-0-13-4. The Australian pacer Mitchel Johnson bowled well as he took two important wickets for his team. Finally, the SRH team was all out for 121 runs in 19.2 overs.
Glen Maxwell was chosen as the Man of the Match for his majestic 95 runs. However, he was dropped by Warner early, which later became the turning point for the match. KXIP won the
three consecutive matches now, and they were the most formidable team of this year’s IPL.
Click here to read about Yes Bank Maximum Sixes, Kanna keep calm & Man of the Match award for this match.