 | « Back to article | Print this article |
Young Priyam Garg will be counting his lucky stars. He went from culprit to hero in a matter of nine overs in SunRisers Hyderabad's 7-run win over the Chennai Super Kings in Dubai on Friday, October 2, 2020.
Hyderabad had got off not the best of starts, losing Jonny Bairstow, Manish Pandey and David Warner inside 11 overs.
Garg came to bat at the fall of Warner's wicket and would consider himself responsible for Kane Williamson's dismissal.
Williamson played the ball to mid-wicket and ran for a single, when there wasn't any. Garg was grounded to his crease while Williamson, stranded mid-pitch, ran back only to get run out. the usually mild Williamson was furious at Garg for the costly error.
However, once Abhishek Sharma joined Garg in the middle, both batters ran the singles and twos before Sharma took on Ravindra Jadeja and Dwayne Bravo hitting them for plenty of runs to race to 23 off 18.
At the other end, Garg was happy to rotate the strike while Sharma went about his stroke making.
He finally got into the groove in the 17th over when he clobbered Sam Curran for 22 runs -- the three fours and a six in the over, coming off proper cricketing shots.
Sharma was dropped twice in the following over, but perished in the same over, caught behind by Mahendra Singh Dhoni for 31 off 24.
Unaffected by the dismissal, Garg found the runs at will and got to his maiden IPL 50 in the 19th over with a strike rate of 196.95. He remained not out and helped SunRisers to 164 for 5 in their 20 overs.
Considering their position early in the game, and a slow track where batting wasn't the easiest, the duo did well to take Hyderabad to a respectable target that proved to be a match-winning one in the end.