Aiden Markram:
“I thought we played good cricket for a large portion of that game but unfortunately in the crunch times we got it wrong. So it’s a difficult one to swallow. Klaasy batted beautifully. I struggled quite a bit upfront and partially quite a big reason for us coming up short I believe. But Klaasen played well, took a bit of pressure off me, and then I could eventually find my feet. But those partnerships, we need to drag out slightly longer and those partnerships are the ones that win you the game.
I thought the bowlers were good. Guys threw themselves around in the field which was good to see and then with the bat, we set up some partnerships but at the end of it, those partnerships were not enough to get us across the line. You’d rather get it wrong trying to be aggressive. Ultimately guys have played enough cricket to know when is the right time and we’ll keep backing them and their decision-making. Hopefully, it’s a situation that brings out the best in us. I thought we played a lot of great cricket tonight so to not get two points is not ideal and not great. But there’s a bit of confidence we can take from tonight and get four out of four.”
Shardul Thakur:
“I think the stage was set for me to get the wicket. If I get a wicket or two there, we are in the game and that’s exactly what happened. [On captain Nitish Rana asking Varun to bowl the final over ahead of himself] The captain had a feeling that he should bowl Varun Chakaravarthy. So as a player, I just have to give confidence to our captain to go with his instincts. There’s no point going in there with any kind of doubt. If he feels he needs to bowl Varun, I said go with your intuition. It was a little sticky.
I felt if you bowled length balls, you would have been fine. If you see previous games, something needs to happen and we would lose a game from the winning point. It’s been difficult, not easy with injuries, so this win was much needed. [Getting Klaasen out] On this kind of pitch, I thought about a cutter but the most important thing was to execute the length and hope that he plays a cross-batted shot and miscues one. When I went out to bat, I played just five or six balls but quickly saw some are stopping and some are coming on so thought I might as well use that.”
Player of the Match is Varun Chakaravarthy:
“My heartbeat was definitely touching 200 [beats per minute] but I just wanted to challenge them on the longer end so that was my plan. [On gripping the slick ball in the rain] Definitely, the ball was slipping a lot and so my best bet was the longer side. That was the only thing in my mind. My first over went for 12 and Markram played some amazing shots. That’s how the game goes. It’s very important to stay in the process. Once emotions set in, I might tend to get carried away and forget my process. Last year, I was bowling at around 85 kph. So I went back and was trying out many things and I realized that once my revolutions go down, my speed goes down. So I worked on my revs and that really helps.”
Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Kolkata Knight Riders Highlights today, Thursday 4-5-2023. 47th Match (N), Indian Premier League 2023, Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Uppal, Hyderabad.
Toss: KKR chose to bat.
Sunrisers Hyderabad team: 1 Mayank Agarwal, 2 Abhishek Sharma, 3 Aiden Markram (capt.), 4 Heinrich Klaasen (wk), 5 Harry Brook, 6 Abdul Samad, 7 Marco Jansen, 8 Mayank Markande, 9 Bhuvneshwar Kumar, 10 Kartik Tyagi, 11 T Natarajan.
Kolkata Knight Riders team: 1 Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), 2 Jason Roy, 3 Venkatesh Iyer, 4 Nitish Rana (capt.), 5 Andre Russell, 6 Rinku Singh, 7 Sunil Narine, 8 Shardul Thakur, 9 Vaibhav Arora, 10 Harshit Rana, 11 Varun Chakaravarthy.
Head to Head In T20’s: 24
Sunrisers Hyderabad Won: 9
Kolkata Knight Riders Won: 15
Form guide
(last five completed Matches, most recent first)
Sunrisers Hyderabad WLLLW
Kolkata Knight Riders LWLLL
Match Timings: 2:00 PM GMT | 7:30 PM Local
Umpires – KN Ananthapadmanabhan, Michael Gough
TV Umpire – Saidharshan Kumar
Match Referee – Narayanan Kutty
Reserve Umpire – Parashar Joshi
Match number – IPL 2023 – 47th Match
IPL Points Table
Pitch and weather: Hyderabad has been lashed by intermittent showers over the past three days. Cloudy skies are expected on Thursday. That means the surface, which has been under the covers for much of the build-up to the game, may have some moisture that fast bowlers could exploit. As such, spinners have been slightly more successful at this venue this season: an economy of 7.70 and strike rate of 19.3, compared to 8.18 and 19.7 respectively for fast bowlers.
