Lucknow’s ‘Supergiants’ fly in the storm of Head-Abhishek, the race for playoff is interesting

New Delhi. Host Sunrisers Hyderabad won the 57th match of IPL 2024 played at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad by 10 wickets. The heroes of the victory were the team’s two opening batsmen, Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head, who ‘thrashed’ the Lucknow bowlers fiercely. With this victory of Hyderabad, the race for playoffs has also become more interesting. Now two teams are in the top-2 with 16 points each. KKR, Rajasthan are on top. Hyderabad has come to third place with 14 points. However, till now no team has been able to officially confirm its place in the playoffs.

An unbroken partnership of 99 runs was formed for the fifth wicket between Ayush Badoni and Nicholas Puran of Lucknow Super Giants, on the basis of which the team scored 165 runs for four wickets. While chasing the target, Hyderabad won the match in the 10th over itself. Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head scored 106 runs in just six overs of powerplay. During this, both of them played 18-8 balls. Head contributed 56 runs and Abhishek contributed 46 runs. Both of them scored runs so fast that Lucknow had no chance to make a comeback. Both of them led the team to victory on the basis of their respective half-centuries.

Earlier, Lucknow had a bad start and the team lost four wickets for 66 runs in 11.2 overs. After this, Badoni scored 55 runs in 30 balls and Puran scored 48 runs in 25 balls. Both of them added 99 runs in 55 balls for the fifth wicket. After powerplay, Lucknow’s score was 27 runs for two wickets. Quinton de Kock, playing in place of injured Mohsin Khan, could not do any wonders and was caught by Nitish Kumar Reddy at deep backward square leg off Bhuvneshwar Kumar.

Bhuvneshwar again took a wicket in the fifth over and sent Marcus Stoinis to the pavilion. However, the credit for this wicket goes to young Sanveer Singh, who took a brilliant catch at mid-on. The pitch did not provide any help to Lucknow and it became difficult for the batsmen to make strokes. Captain KL Rahul (29) and Krunal Pandya (29) could not play big innings. Krunal hit a straight six to Jaydev Unadkat and scored 15 runs by hitting another six in the eighth over itself. Rahul hit his first four off Sunrisers captain Pat Cummins in the 10th over. However, he was seen struggling for timing and in his quest to score fast runs, he got caught by T Natarajan at deep backward square leg on the last ball of the same over.

tag: ipl 2024, Lucknow Super Giants, Sunrisers Hyderabad