In the fifth match of the TATA Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022, Rajasthan Royals (RR) defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) by 61 runs at the MCA stadium in Pune.
After Kane Williamson won the toss, he asked the Royals to bat first. The green pitch was quite supportive to the bowlers just needed to bowl it in the right areas. The openers Jos Bulter (35) and Yashasvi Jaiswal (20) added 58 runs for the first wicket. SRH missed the trick, Sanju Samson (55) along with Devdutt Padikkal (41) made them pay the price. The duo added 73 for the third wicket before Padikkal was cleaned up by Umran Malik. Samson completed his half-century but was dismissed soon by Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Later, Shimron Hetmyer (32) took charge and played a late cameo, assisting his team in imposing a difficult target for the opponents. After the first innings, Rajasthan Royals had amassed a massive score of 210 at the loss of six wickets.
SRH had an awful start to the innings. The skipper departed in a controversial manner. The top-order struggled in the first 10 overs so the team couldn’t put many runs on the board to keep up with the run rate. Hyderabad’s saving grace was the partnership between Aiden Markram (57*) and Washington Sundar (40), the two batsmen smashed boundaries at the back end of the innings and gave something to cheer for the SRH fans. In the end, the 2016 champions fell short of the target by 61 runs.
Yuzvendra Chahal pocketed three wickets for RR while Trent Boult and Prasidh Krishna had two wickets each. For SRH, Natarajan and Malik had two scalps each, Kumar and Romario Shepherd also had one wicket each to their names.
Samson’s RR gathered two crucial points in their first game. The Rajasthan skipper was also adjudged Man of the Match for his emphatic batting performance.
Scorecard:
Rajasthan Royals: 210/6, Overs 20, Sanju Samson 55, Umran Malik 2/39
Sunrisers Hyderabad: 149/7, Overs 20, Aiden Markram 57*, Yuzvendra Chahal 3/22