Hyderabad: Mohammed Shami’s inspirational opening spell was pivotal in Lucknow Super Giants restricting Sunrisers Hyderabad to 156 for 9 despite a fantastic counter-attacking century stand by Heinrich Klaasen and Nitish Kumar Reddy in an IPL match here on Sunday, April 5.
After having their backs to the wall with scorecard reading an abysmal 35 for 4 after the first 10, Klaasen (62 off 41 balls) and Reddy (56 off 33 balls) threw caution to the wind with ‘offense is the best defense’ policy as balls flew into the stands with monotonous regularity in a record fifth wicket stand of 116 runs in 10.3 overs.
However once both were dismissed in quick succession, LSG once again came back into the game to restrict the home team to under 160.
This was after Shami’s incredible figures of 4-0-9-2, comprising 18 dot balls that really had SRH on the mat as the celebrated top three of Travis Head (7), Abhishek Sharma (0) and skipper Ishan Kishan (1) were back in the dug-out.
Worse, the hard-hitting Liam Livingstone also headed back, thanks to smart glovework by LSG skipper Rishabh Pant.
But once the back 10 started, things suddenly changed as the next five overs from 11-15 produced an astounding 79 runs with leg-spinner Digvesh Rathi, after giving only 10 runs in his first two overs, went for 36 in his next two.
The Indian pacers Avesh Khan and Prince Yadav, who looked good in the front 10, suddenly lost their bearings and length as Klaasen and Reddy mostly hit through the line. In the first 10, only one six and one four was hit but the Klaasen-Reddy pairing hit seven maximums and eight boundaries between them.
Overlooked time and again, 35-year-old Shami once again sent a stern reminder to the national selection committee with an opening spell for the ages that was pivotal to Lucknow Super Giants choking Sunrisers Hyderabad despite the Klaasen-Reddy stand.
Shami removed IPL’s most destructive opening pair of Abhishek and Head off successive deliveries across his first two overs to set the tone.
The cerebral operator in Shami quickly understood that he would have to take the pace off the deliveries on this track and did so promptly.
He bowled four fullish blockhole deliveries to Head and allowed a single. When Abhishek took strike, the final delivery of the opening over was a loopy fuller delivery on the fifth stump which the opener tried to pitch.
Instead of a conventional slip, a ‘fly slip’ or short third-man on the circle was stationed and Manimaran Siddharth took a smart diving catch. Off the very first delivery of his next over, Shami bowled a slower one on length which gripped and bounced a touch more forcing Head to check his drive but the uppish jab was caught by Aiden Markram at mid-off diving in-front.
