It was a sea of orange when stand-in captain Bhuvneshwar Kumar opted to field first after winning the toss against Rajasthan Royals at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad on Sunday. But by the evening, it was nothing but pink bloom. Sanju ‘sensational’ Samson and his terrific squad started the IPL 2023 campaign with a crushing victory against Sunrisers Hyderabad on their home ground. SRH bowlers failed to restrict the explosive batting lineup of RR and the Royals put a challenging total of 203 on the scoreboard. It was an ok target but the batsmen of Orange Army failed to deliver.
Yuzvendra Chahal who completed 300 wickets in T20 cricket today was in full form. Just a look at his performance show that what a terror he was for th SRH batters. Chahal’s 4-0-17-4 super show along with Trent Boult 4-1-21-2 made sure that the SRH never really recovered from the intitial setback. Brook fell in the seventh over while Holder got rid of Washington Sundar (1) in the ninth.
In the 10th over, while Ashwin had Glenn Phillips (8) caught by KM Asif, Chahal ended Agarwal’s resistance in the next over to seal the game in favour of his side. SRH’s impact substitute Adbul Samad remained unbeaten on a run-a-ball 32 while RR’s Navdeep Saini bowled two expensive overs for 34 runs, giving away 23 in the final over of the game.
Earlier in the day, RR openers showed that they had a set target in their heads – a big total for the team. Young batter Yashasvi Jaiswal and Jos Buttler scored fiery fifties to cross the century mark very quickly. The openers had done their job pretty well and skipper Sanju Samson made sure that their efforts don’t go in vain. His brilliant fifty helped RR to amass a good total. With Sunday win, RR has become the first team of Tata IPL 2023 to score a victory in an ‘away’ match.
(With PTI inputs)