How quickly the night shifts. The roles reversed on Wednesday night, two days after a video of Hardik Pandya instructing Rohit Sharma where to pitch before shoving him to the boundary went viral. After MI recovered from Sunrisers Hyderabad’s rampant attack, the former captain Rohit assumed command in between overs. Naturally, Hardik continued to be the captain, but for a brief while, Rohit took over as the decision-maker, setting the pitch, and chatting with the bowlers, just like in the old days, when Hardik ran out of ideas.
Rohit took matters into his own hands as SRH hammered 81 in the Powerplay and Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma made it rain sixes at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium. Reminiscent of the previous 11 seasons, MI took on the captaincy hat and made a few adjustments to the pitch, forcing Hardik to run to the boundary. The footage shows MI fleeing from Head and Sharma’s attack in the ideal role reversal.
But what a game it was. More than 500 runs were scored, which is a record for any T20 match, and 38 sixes were hit. As SRH thrashed 277/3, they easily broke the record for the highest team total in an IPL game, which had been held by Royal Challengers Bengaluru for 11 years. MI responded with the highest IPL total in a chase, but it was obviously insufficient as the five-time champions finished with 246/5, 31 runs short of the target.
Head and Sharma reached their fifties with 19 and 17 balls, respectively. Head held the record for the fastest fifty by an SRH batter and was the first to arrive. However, it was only sustained for a few overs before Sharma improved it by a ball. It’s true that the pitch at Uppal was perfect for batting and helped batters, but nobody saw this kind of destruction coming. By the halfway point of the innings, SRH was cruising at 148/1, which was also the highest score in the history of the IPL after ten overs. Chaos reigned. One that totally destroyed MI.
The world came closest to witnessing a recurrence of the tsunami that Chris Gayle had unleashed at the Chinnaswamy in 2013 thanks to SRH’s batting. As virtually every other ball was carted away for six, those on cricket websites tasked with providing real-time updates of the match ran out of ideas for what to write and how to write the next post. It was the same last night. Eleven years has passed between these two games, and the only difference is that yesterday all of SRH’s hitters enjoyed themselves at MI’s expense.
Head opened the scoring with a 24-ball 62, Sharma kept the scoreboard moving with a 23-ball 63 after his partner was out, and Heinrich Klaasen’s unbeaten 80 off 34 sealed the victory and put SRH at a record total. The demolition was so complete that Aiden Markram’s 42 strikeouts out of 28 at a 150 strike rate is barely mentioned. Absolutely bonkers.
Bravo to MI for trying to investigate this, as they emerged with a vengeance. Ishan Kishan and Rohit went toe-to-toe, raising their fifty in three overs. Ishan was merciless to Bhuvneshwar Kumar, hitting the seasoned Indian seamer with three consecutive sixes. Tilak Varma’s aggressive hitting allowed MI to maintain the pace even as both openers were dismissed. Along with Shahbaz Ahmed, he also hit three straight sixes and reached a half-century off of 24 balls.
However, the asking rate’s pressure was just too great. Naman Dhir completed his quota of 30 off 14 balls prior to Pandya joining Tilak. But Hardik faltered after getting off to a strong start with a six and a four, and Tilak lost. Tim David made an unsuccessful attempt with 42 not out off 22 balls.
