IPL 2018: Combined brilliance of bowling and fielding won us against RCB, says Kane Williamson

Kane Williamson played a classy knock of 56 against RCB.

SRH spinners once again came to the party and defended 146 successfully against RCB | IANS

Sunrisers Hyderabad continued their dominance in the ongoing Indian Premier League as they secured a thrilling 5-run victory over Royal Challengers Bangalore at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Monday (May 7).

While defending the subpar total of 146, SRH spinners once again came to the party as they dealt blows at regular intervals with Shakib Al Hasan (2/36) and Rashid Khan (1/31) kept the scoring under check. Sandeep Sharma was also economical in his four overs as he finished with 1/20.

Speaking at the post-match presentation ceremony, Williamson said: “What would’ve been great was to get heap of wickets early, that’s what you are always after. But some of these surfaces that we have played, it is difficult to do that unless batsmen come very hard at you. It was hard to bring in the slip fielders as there was little swing and the pitch was on the slower side. We wanted try and commit to a plan for as long as we could. We know when we do it on some of the varied surfaces that we have played we can build the pressure (in the middle overs) and things can happen quickly.”

“Our bowling attack has been outstanding and so is the fielding. But today we weren’t at our best in either. But we saw signs of brilliance from both parts which made the difference in just sneaking across the line. Sometimes, it’s the nature of the surface which dictates the fighting, scrappy mentality on them with the bat and the ball,” he added.

After being into put, SRH were tottering at 48/3 after 8.2 overs before Williamson and Shakib Al Hasan brought the team out of the deep hole with a measured 64-run stand. However, after Williamson’s dismissal, SRH lost the last seven wickets for 34 runs.

“It was a varied surface. We were targeting about 150. We weren’t far away from that. The game ebbed and flowed. At times we were struggling a little bit. We were looking good to get a 155 to 160 run total. We got 140-odd, and we were certainly in the game at the halfway point. Then with the ball it was similar, we took wickets, stemmed flow of runs but they built little partnerships. We did feel that if we were at our usual standard, we could have operated better on the field. That is something we would want to do in the next game. At the end of the day, it was good to fight hard and get the win,” Kane asserted.

The SRH captain concluded by defending his middle-order batsmen.

“It’s really important that as batters we go out and play with freedom. We have been playing on surfaces where it’s very difficult to do that especially coming towards the end and do it from ball one. It’s really important to play smart cricket and at the same time get as many runs as you can. We were targeting about 150, we were just five runs off it,” he concluded.

SRH will now face Delhi Daredevils in their next match on Thursday (May 10) at the Feroz Shah Kotla.

 
 

By Salman Anjum - 08 May, 2018

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