Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach Daniel Vettori has put his weight behind the batting unit after they suffered a crushing 82-run loss against Gujarat Titans at the Narendra Modi Stadium, Ahmedabad on Tuesday. 

SRH were chasing a competitive total of 169 runs on a tricky pitch but lost the early wicket of Travis Head, who was dismissed without troubling the scorers. The visitors kept losing wickets at regular intervals and found themselves under the cosh at 32-4 after 5.5 overs.

In fact, none of the SRH batters could even breach the 20-run mark and Pat Cummins’ team was bundled out for a paltry score of 86 runs.

“We knew we needed to get off to a good start and that’s what we weren’t able to do,” Vettori said in the post-match press conference. “But I mean if they’d scored 200 then we knew it would have been incredibly difficult. But I think the fact that it was 169 we thought we had a chance.

“But as always, you have to start well and we didn’t tonight and that’s what happens. And I don’t put any blame on the batting unit. They’ve been exceptional this year. Every team throughout the IPL is going to have their small blips once in a while and ours was tonight”.

On the other hand, Gujarat Titans’ spinner Sai Kishore praised the opening duo of Mohammed Siraj and Kagiso Rabada for consistently hitting the hard Test match length on a difficult surface.

“Overall, this season, Siraj and Rabada have been hitting their lengths very well,” Kishore said. “That is the advantage of having proper Test-match bowlers in your line-up, I guess.

“And we have been ably led by Shubman Gill and Ashish Nehra in terms of the bowling philosophies, in terms of what lengths to bowl in the Powerplay. And on such a wicket, not depending on the slower balls or yorker a lot, trusting that hard length, trusting that good length in this wicket. Bowling proper Test-match bowling: I think that has made a huge difference in the season for us”.