Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) suffered a narrow five-run defeat at the hands of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in Match 47 of IPL 2023 at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad on Thursday (May 4).

Opting to bat first, KKR posted 171/9 in their allotted 20 overs with key contributions from Rinku Singh (46 off 35) and Nitish Rana (42 off 31).

Marco Jansen (2-24) and T Natarajan (2-30) starred with the ball for SRH, returning with a couple of wickets each.

In reply, the Sunrisers were restricted to 166/8. While the likes of Aiden Markram (41) and Heinrich Klaasen (36) played good knocks, they failed to take their team over the finishing line.

After the game, SRH head coach Brian Lara blamed his batters for suffering their sixth defeat in the ongoing IPL season.

"We keep losing couple of wickets in powerplay and that always sets you back a bit. We again ask (Heinrich) Klassen, who has been batting tremendous for us, to do all the hardwork. He is coming in at No.6, we have got five quality players before him. It's always been a task for him.

"The batters obviously will know the responsibility of winning such a game on a good batting track but we are unable to do it," Lara said in the post-match press conference.

"We have to lay a bit more importance on partnerships and understanding a bit of match awareness. It's all great to be aggressive but you have to got to use a little bit of upstairs to get the job done."

Lara lauded the KKR spin duo of Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy for their stunning bowling display.

"They are quality spinners. We have seen that as a trend that as the tournament goes on spinners are coming into play. The likes of Narine, Chakravarthy, they are all world-class spinners.

"We did put on a very good partnership (Aiden Markram and Klassen). We got ourselves right back in the game with a couple of big overs. Then again we lost a couple of wickets at very crucial stage of the match.

"I would say that we had a game to win and we have to hold our hands up and say they didn't beat us we lost the game. The game was in our hands and we lost the game," the Caribbean legend said.

SRH are now placed ninth in the 10-team standings with three wins from nine matches and their playoff chances look bleak.

"The situation is that we want to be as positive as possible. We found ourselves a little bit tentative chasing a 140 odd against Delhi and find ourselves at the bottom of ranking. We will try to inject some positivity and intent in our batting," Lara stated.

(With PTI Inputs)