Sunrisers Hyderabad took down Royal Challengers Bangalore by 8 runs to be crowned champions of the Indian Premier League Season IX. It was a match fitting of a tournament final; with the championship and a purse of INR 15 crore at stake, both teams landed punches and counter-punches at various points in time to take the edge off the other. In the end though, SRH prevailed by a small margin of eight runs – and it was only because they did the one percenters better than their opponents.
Hindsight gives us the opportunity to look back at the match and pick out the crucial things that made the difference between winning and losing. Here are some of those moments that RCB will look back and say they could have done better:
1. RCB Gave Away Easy Runs
When bowling first, RCB were guilty of gifting runs to the opposition. One can recall a few lapses by RCB players in the field – Chris Gayle dropped a return catch of Shikhar Dhawan when he was on 6, David Warner was dropped by KL Rahul on 51 (even though the Umpire signaled it a Bye later on), and a few others conceded runs on the field because of misfields, because they didn’t attack the ball quickly enough or by means of overthrows.
That apart, purely in terms of measurable runs added to the scoreboard, while RCB conceded 12 runs through wides and byes, SRH’s bowlers were more disciplined and bowled only 4 wides. The difference between the lack of discipline of the two sides? 8 runs!
2. Too Many Dot Balls
Players have grown to learn that in the T20 format, every ball is an event. There is a strong possibility that the outcome of one ball can alter the result of a match. In a big final, chasing a target of 209, RCB had to make every ball count. They perhaps missed a trick by batting out 41 dot balls in their run-chase; that is a drastic drop in comparison to their season’s average dot ball number of 34. The difference? 7 dot balls more than their season average.
Furthermore, on the big day, their opponents improved on their season average of 42 dot balls – they batted out 39 dot balls in their batting innings – which was an improvement of three balls over their season average.
3. Final Over Fumbles
Despite having to
chase a mountain of a target – 209, RCB were well and truly in the hunt for
most part of the chase. In terms of comparing the two teams’ scores at the end
of every over, RCB were ahead of SRH’s score from Over 2.0 to Over 19.0. The
decisive performance in the match was in the final over of the two teams; where
Ben Cutting and Bhuvneshwar Kumar pounded Shane Watson and added 24 in the
final over, Sachin Baby and Iqbal Abdullah could only add 9 runs in the final
over bowled by Bhuvneshwar Kumar. Despite bossing most part of the run-chase,
RCB came up short when it mattered most – in the final over.
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