"WHATEVER ground we go to," Daniel Vettori had fired a warning shot on the eve of Sunrisers Hyderabad's season-opener against Rajasthan Royals, "we have an understanding that the batting team is going to be aggressive. The only thing that can mitigate that is the pitch, but most times, the pitches in the IPL are very flat. "It's quite.
.. maybe not fun is the right word, it's a good challenge for a bowling group to try and work their way through that.
" Vettori was intimate with what Pat Cummins, the franchise captain, told the team. The Australian had said the onus was on the batters to do all the heavy-lifting with the bowling group potentially feeding off that energy. "If we get those days to make it all work, it's going to go a long way in us winning games," the Kiwi said.
"The onus is on the batting group to score runs and for the bowlers to be able to mitigate that." On the evidence of what transpired in their home ground on Sunday afternoon, Hyderabad are on course to not only emulate but perhaps go one better than 2024 when they tripped at the final hurdle. On a belter of a deck, all of Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma, Ishan Kishan, Nitish Reddy and Heinrich Klaasen routinely hit boundaries in a display of brute power-hitting.
Even if some of the shots were premeditated, there was a distinct method to the mayhem they unleashed — staying leg-side of the ball, clearing the in-field and playing the percentages. Kishan, one of the franchise's big-money signings at the mega a.
