The 10th edition of the Indian Premier League kicked off in a sterling manner after the defending champions Sunrisers Hyderabad bagged their first win of the season defeating Shane Watson-led Royal Challengers Bangalore in the opening match. The defending champion, after being asked to bat first, put up a massive total of 207 runs for the loss of 4 wickets. In reply, RCB were bowled out on a total of 172 runs with 2 balls spare.
Soon after marking the first win of the season, SRH’s left-handed batsman Shikhar Dhawan took to social networking site Instagram and shared a video where Yuvraj Singh and Ashish Nehra can be seen dancing to celebrate their victory over RCB. Dhawan captioned the video as “Naach Basanti Naach, Jab Tak Tere Paer Chalengey Tab Tak Inki Saansein #gabbar.”
Watch the video here:
SHR crushed a depleted RCB with its left-handed batting storm Yuvraj Singh’s blazing 62 runs off just 27 balls. This was the fastest half-century of the IPL seasons till date. Even the blowing attack of the defending champion were at par with Afghanistan leg-spinner Rashid Khan Arman nabbing 2 wickets in four overs.
SRH started off with an early blow after skipper David Warner was dismissed on just 14 runs. Following this, Dhawan and Australian all-rounder Moises Henriques cemented the team on stable grounds putting together a 74-run second-wicket partnership. Later Dhawan walked back to the pavilion and this was when the veteran Punjab batsman Yuvraj Singh joined the run feast and together with Henriques made another 58-run stand for the third wicket taking the team to cross 150-run mark by the 15th over. Going down the order, batsmen Deepak Hooda and Ben Cutting did the icing on the cake with some big shots and took the team past 200 run mark.
The Virat Kohli-less RCB was seen on backfoot since the beginning and kept on losing wickets at regular intervals. This was for the first time after 23 IPL matches that the team was bowled out.