Sunrisers Hyderabad assistant coach Simon Hemlot on Monday heaped praises on Mumbai Indians batter Suryakumar Yadav after his team’s 7-wicket loss to Hardik Pandya’s team. MI kept their playoff hopes alive with the win as SKY starred with a blistering century to help MI gain a comfortable victory.
Batting first, SRH posted a target of 174 runs for Hardik Pandya’s team. Travis Head starred with 48 runs for SRH but a collapse in middle order saw SRH being restricted to 173. In reply, Suryakumar Yadav took Wankhede by storm and scored an unbeaten century to take MI home.
Dew factor
Simon Hemlot, talking in the post-match press conference, referred to the dew factor in the second innings.
“Difficult night for us. Obviously we were bowling second and there was a lot of dew so it was difficult with the spin. We fell short a bit in the amount of runs we would’ve liked. Also, SKY’s special hundred was a major factor on why we didn’t win tonight,” he said.
Head’s not-so-perfect innings
Travis Head got off to a good start but failed to convert it into a big score, something that the SRH assistant coach rued after the game.
“Travis has been one of our better players this season at the top of the order but even he found it difficult at times to time the ball on this particular track. And that’ll happen different times during the season. He’s a very difficult batsman to match up with when he’s in that sort of form,” Hemlot said.
SKY the game-changer
Suryakumar Yadav to proved to be the difference maker ultimately, and the SRH coach did not mince words to praise the top-ranked T20I batter in the world.
“I think he was a little bit fortunate off Pat back of the bat over third man for six, but that still went a long way back. And, uh, from then on, he never made a mistake. He was in amazing form. We did our best to try and mix things up to try and get him out. But he was just too good for tonight. And some days you just have to take your head off and say, well played and well played to him tonight. He is definitely going to have an impact in the T20 World Cup,” he said.
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