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Kane Williamson skippered Sunrisers Hyderabad came out a solid all- round show as they beat Kolkata Knight Riders by wickets. With this win SRH has now recorded three wins from five games while it was KKR’s third loss in six games.
SRH skipper Kane Williamson won the toss and asked KKR to bat first. SRH bowlers were all over KKR . The pace attack was splendid . KKR began on a horror not losing Venkatesh Iyer ( 6) and playing his first match Aaron Finch ( 6) early. Ajinkaya Rahane for his poor form was dropped . Skipper Shreyas Iyer hit 28 but consumed 25 balls before he was victim of Umran Malik’s sheer pace . Sunil Narine was out for 6. Thanks to Nitish Rana’s 32 ball 54 ( 36 balls , 6 fours and 2 sixes) and a blistering unbeaten cameo towards the end by Andre Russell 25 ball 49 with fours and for sixes , KKR struggled to reach a fighting total 175/ 8 in their 20 overs.
SRH pace attack was brilliant : T Natarajan 3/37, Umran Malik 2/27, Marco Jansen 1/26 and Bhuvneshwar Kumar 1/37
In reply SRH lost in- from Abhishek Sharma early for 3 to Pat Cummins. Skipper Kane Williamson fell for 17. But in- from Rahul Tripathi was superb from the word go and and was effortless in his batting . Tripathi played shots all around the ground and scored a impactful 37 ball 71 ( 4 fours and 6 sixes) . South African Aiden Markram too joined the party and he too was excellent and remained unbeaten on a 38 ball 68 ( 6 fours and for sixes) .
Going into the 18th over with 18 runs needed to win, Markram finished off the game in spectacular fashion — hitting a four and two sixes to seal the win in epic fashion with more than two overs to spare. Nicholas Pooran was not out 5
KKR bowling figures read : Umesh Yadav 0/ 31 (4 overs) , Pat Cummins 1/ 40 (3,5 overs), Andre Russell 2/20 ( 2 overs) , Varun Chakaravarthy 0/ 45 (3 overs) , Sunil Narine 0/ 23 ( 4 overs)
