Image Credit- BCCI
In the last over, Sunrisers Hyderabad let Ashutosh Sharma get three catches, leaving Punjab Kings needing 29 runs to win. Two of them almost turned the match by going over the ropes for sixes. However, Kings required nine deliveries, and after the third failed, there was just one left. Kings lost their pursuit of 183 runs, which gave Sunrisers their third victory of the season, by barely two runs, despite Shashank Singh hitting the final ball far over the long-off boundary.
Jaydev Unadkat bowled the final over, which ended at 26. Inevitably, Harshal Patel dropped Unadkat on the last delivery of Sunrisers’ innings, and the ball bounced up over the rope for six. precise edges.
Had Shashank and Ashutosh managed to pull off another heist against the Gujarat Titans, as they did five days prior, what a dream it would have been. Eventually, though, they had too many to get in the last chase over.
Arshdeep Singh had four wickets in as many IPL 2024 games going into this one. He doubled his season total against SRH his route to 4 for 29. The first of those occurred as Dhawan reversed direction and backpedalled from mid-off on the second ball of the third over in order to catch Head. After two deliveries, Arshdeep got Markram to edge behind the wicketkeeper with an angled delivery. With Arshdeep’s opening spell stats of 2-0-8-2, SRH was limited to 40 for 3, their lowest powerplay of the season.
It would have been Nitish Kumar Reddy’s heart in his mouth during the last over’s devastation. Ultimately, he had mishandled the opening ball of the last over, which was Ashutosh’s catch. However, Reddy’s innings of 64 off 37 balls lifted SRH to 182 after saving them from a dire 64 for 4 in the tenth over.
Halfway through the 16th over, with Kings at 114 for 6, Shashank and Ashutosh teamed up. With 24 balls left, the needed rate, which was 15.33 at the time, quickly increased to 16.75. For every one of those four overs, a different bowler was used, and they were all sent to the dry cleaners.
And Shashank faced Bhuvneshwar Kumar in the seventeenth. Over the short third first ball of the over, he got a streaky outside edge for four. The next ball was cut to deep extra cover, and the next was hammered wide long-off.
After that, Ashutosh kept the Kings in contention by swatting and ramping Pat Cummins for two consecutive fours in the eighteenth over. With Kings needing to score 39 in the final two overs, the odds were still in favour of SRH. Unadkat had 28 to defend in the 20th after T Natajaran was removed for ten, a great over in the grand scheme of things.
The last over for Unadkat began with a six, two wides, and another six. In two balls, fourteen runs were gone. However, he bounced back, giving up just six runs in his next three deliveries. The final ball was delivered by Shashank for a six, but Kings just failed to cross the boundary.