Sunrisers Hyderabad’s winless run was extended to a third loss in a row after they suffered their heaviest defeat ever, this time to hosts Kolkata Knight Riders by 80 runs at Eden Gardens.
It was a bad day all over for Pat Cummins’ team, who failed to curb in KKR’s big bats after two wickets in the first half of the Powerplay, dropped catches – they have spilled eight this season, the most for any team – and then were bowled out for 120 in 16.4 overs in front of a target of 201. This massive defeat leaves SRH at last place on the IPL 2025 points table.
Last season, KKR won all three matches against SRH which included Qualifier and the final. The one-way traffic continued Thursday, as Cummins’ Midas touch continued to desert him in what can be summed up as a very sloppy performance.
Cummins said at the toss that he was terrible at reading pitches, then chose to put KKR in. It began well for SRH when Cummins had Quinton de Kock mistiming a pull shot to deep midwicket, followed by the wicket of Sunil Narine to Mohammed Shami.
But after taking a few deliveries to get his eye in, KKR captain Ajinkya Rahane started the counterpunch in the latter half of the Powerplay with sixes off Cummins, Shami and Simarjeet Singh. Partnering him was the young Indian talent Ankgrish Raghuvanshi who eased to his second IPL half-century, off 32 balls.
The Sunrisers had another opening, once the set pair was dismissed, and KKR were 122/4 after 15 overs. But it went pear-shaped again, as Venkatesh Iyer and Rinku Singh launched a stinging attack on the pacers. Cummins was not spared in this onslaught which brought 78 runs in five overs, with Iyer breaking out of a slump with 60 off 29 deliveries.
The tall left-handed batsman clubbed Cummins for 4,4,6, 4 in successive deliveries, which left the SRH skipper with figures of 1/44 from four which included five sixes. Rinku weighed in with 32 not out from 17 balls, getting KKR to 200/6.
The hosts defended this total tigerishly. Travis Head was out second ball, miscuing a ball from Vaibhav Arora, followed by the wicket of Abhishek Sharma for 2 and Ishan Kishan for the same score which meant that SRH had lost three wickets in 13 deliveries.
Arora capped a fine evening with 3/29 and only Heinrich Klaasen with 33 showed an appetite for a scrap.
“Not a great night,” admitted Cummins after the record loss. “You’ve got to be realistic, it’s three games in a row it hasn’t come off for us but it was only a couple of weeks ago we got 280-odd.
“Our batters are at our best taking it on, but you have to think about if you could take different options. We won’t dwell on it too long. It’s a long tournament, not the ideal start, but we’ve still got plenty of time to catch up.”
