Sunrisers Hyderabad’s push to complete their resurgence with a playoff qualification has suffered a setback, at least for now, after Gujarat Titans handed them a brutal reality check with a commanding win at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on Tuesday. SRH’s batting line-up crumbled like nine pins as they were bowled out for just 86 in 14.5 overs while chasing 169, suffering an 82-run defeat that pushed them down to third place in the points table.
Despite the heavy loss, captain Pat Cummins refused to hit the panic button even after Sunrisers lost two of their last three matches. Instead, he chose to focus on the bigger picture, with SRH having won six of their previous eight games, including a five-match winning streak that had taken them to the top of the table until the start of this month. Describing the defeat against Gujarat as mere “breathing room”, Cummins backed his side to bounce back and still qualify for the playoffs.
“I think getting ahead of the count pretty early is important. I think we won five or six out of the last seven. It gives you a bit of breathing room in these last few games. So yeah, we’ve still got two games left to qualify. Again, it’s about going back to what got us those wins in the first place and putting this one behind us pretty quickly,” he told the broadcaster after the match.
Sunrisers were completely outplayed in the powerplay, with Kagiso Rabada and Mohammed Siraj picking up four wickets between them while conceding just 34 runs. Jason Holder then ripped through the middle order with a three-wicket haul to wrap up the game.
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Cummins acknowledged Gujarat’s superb bowling display and admitted where SRH fell short in execution.
“I think they made the most of the conditions. Their bowlers bowled really well, so maybe we need to look at ways to get through spells like that, but they deserve a lot of credit. It looked like quite a tough wicket once the bowlers hit that hard back-of-a-length area and they didn’t really give us many scoring opportunities.
“Perhaps during our bowling innings, we could have learnt from that and held our lengths a little longer. But overall, that’s as good a T20 bowling performance as you’re going to see,” he added.
SRH will next face Chennai Super Kings on May 18 before ending their league-stage campaign against defending champions Royal Challengers Bengaluru on May 22.