Delhi Capitals’ captain Shreyas Iyer admitted that David Warner-led Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) outplayed them in all three departments in the 11th match of the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL) 2020 in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday (September 29).
The SRH were too good to handle for the DC in a one-sided affair, as the Tuesday’s encounter has seen much improvement in Orange Army from their previous games, solving their middle-order issues to post a competitive total apart from raising their fielding standards and excelled bowling.
After being asked to bat first, SRH scored 162/4 in the allotted 20 overs with the help of valuable contributions from skipper Warner (45), Jonny Bairstow (53), and Kane Williamson (41).
Defending the total, Rashid Khan led the SRH bowling unit by taking 3 for 14 in his quota of 4 overs, and later he was well supported by Bhuvneshwar Kumar (2/25) and T Natarajan (1/25) to restrict the DC at 147/7 to win the IPL 13 encounter by 15 runs in Abu Dhabi.
Iyer said at the post-match presentation: “We were pretty much happy with 162; it was a par score on this wicket. We had no idea how this wicket would behave as this is our first game here. They outplayed us in all three departments and credit to them for that.”
The 25-year-old further added, “It was surprising, and in the second innings, it (pitch) was two-paced. When I went in, the ball wasn’t coming onto the bat. We thought dew would come on, but we can’t give any reasons at this moment. We didn’t execute the way we wanted to.”
Meanwhile, Iyer has insisted that the ground was big, and pointed out the failure of his batsmen for not taking enough doubles in the 11th match of the IPL 2020, saying: “The ground is very big, and we didn’t capitalize on taking doubles. We knew boundaries are big here, and doubles will be key for us, it didn’t work out for us. Hopefully next time we can maximize the opportunities.”
He signed off by saying, “Lots of learnings from this wicket and conditions. Ricky Ponting went in (during the time-out), and we needed one batsman to take a chance as the required rate was pretty high.”
(With ANI Inputs)
