Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) stand-in skipper Bhuvneshwar Kumar admitted his team’s performance was below-par after Punjab Kings (PBSK) won the 70th match of the ongoing IPL 2022 by 5 wickets inside 16 overs on Sunday (May 22) at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai.
SRH posted a fair total of 157/8 on the board, but PBKS chased down the target with 29 balls to spare to win the match by 5 wickets, and Bhuvneshwar admitted that SRH was many runs short in the match.
The veteran pacer also said that SRH failed to execute their batting plans, as well as were poor on the field as they dropped several catches. SRH finished the season with 6 wins of 14 matches.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar said at the post-match presentation: “Good feeling (on being the captain), but it would have been better if we had won the match. I wouldn’t say we were a few runs short, we were many short… with them winning with 5 overs left, but we had to field better, didn’t take our chances and there were fumbles, but this was the last match of the season and that does have effect.”
On SRH’s performance in the IPL 14, the pacer said: “We won 5 on the bounce and had the momentum, but it didn’t go our way and we pretty much lost all our matches in the second half of the tournament. We will have to look at our squad and the management will have to work out the weaknesses ahead of the next season.”
Highlighting the positives for SRH this season, Bhuvneshwar said: “Umran Malik and Abhishek Sharma were the obvious positives, but we have a decent core of batting with Aiden Markram and Nicholas Pooran coming up pretty well.”
He signed off by saying about his own performance, “As for me, it was a challenging season with injuries hampering me, thought I did a decent job and will look to come back better in the next season.”
(With PTI/IANS Inputs)
