SRH’s flexibility with the plans was evident in how Warner and Bairstow ran between the wickets.
Role changes are an uncommon part of team plans in T20 cricket, where there is a lot of thought behind getting your first action plans right and executing them. For Sunrisers Hyderabad, chasing their first IPL 2020 win, the changes imposed on them early in the game could have made another game go haywire.
Jonny Bairstow and David Warner are his designated executors at the top of the order. But when the Delhi Capitals restricted them to just 24 in their first five overs of the power play, there was a need to reassess plans given the longer limits at stake in Abu Dhabi, along with accurate bowling. Coach Trevor Bayliss attested to the team’s ideologies to the announcers, emphasizing that SRH remains “flexible” with its plans once on the field.
Bairstow and Warner showed what that was like when they started pushing for both of them and hitting them five times on the ten balls after the power play. Overall, they would make it four times as many in their society of 77. That these plans are not an outdated concept even in a format like T20, and even by first-hitters, was evident when the opposition coach praised them.
“The Sunrisers rotated the strike well and some of their best hitters had great scores. At the end of the day, I think that was the difference in the game. I thought Warner just played those conditions really well at the beginning. They hit the limits when they wanted to and they ran two at a time exceptionally well into the balls in the outfield, which is something we talk about on these great grounds, “Delhi Capitals coach Ricky Ponting said at the post-game press conference.
While that Plan B ensured that the Sunrisers stayed on par in the game, it wouldn’t be enough to change the game. Warner, with five limits in 33 deliveries, had outperformed Bairstow, who managed just three in 48, but the execution rate still needed a boost.
Including Kane Williamson in the eleven at the expense of Mohammad Nabi was “a great decision,” admitted Warner after the game. It might not have happened if SRH didn’t feel the need to strengthen its malfunctioning middle order. The party situation Williamson found himself in demanded that he play a role he was not used to.
He started out by matching seriousness by running and flipping the strike – he played just one point in his 26-ball run. The 52-run stoppage between him and Bairstow came off 39 balls and he saw five more points at the other end. But Williamson was also finding ways to compensate for them, moving his wrists to find gaps and reading the field to hit the 30-yard circle.
The methods gave him five limits and a strike rate of 157. No one who hit more than 12 balls came close to calling him from anywhere. No one probably thought this was possible early in the game, but it was another one of the flexible plans that was good for SRH.
On the contrary, many more turned out well for SRH on the bowling front. Rashid Khan collected his best IPL figures, his pacemakers landed the yorkers at a better pace at the right times. Their weakest link, left arm spinner Abhishek Sharma, went for just 38 in his share against very unfavorable matchups. In Ponting’s words, his target player had “slipped away a bit.”
The end result showed a 15-run gap between the two sides, a comfortable margin, but without revealing how the main hitting group changed color to allow for this difference.
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