Sunrisers Hyderabad lost a chance to make the IPL 2018 finale after failing to defend their 139-run total, but captain Kane Williamson believes they fell short in the batting department.
South African skipper Faf du Plessis pulled off a 'Houdini Act' to guide Chennai Super Kings to their seventh Indian Premier League final with a two-wicket victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL 2018 Qualifier 1 in Mumbai on Tuesday, 22 May.
Chasing a modest target, CSK were down in dumps at 92 for 7 before Du Plessis (67 off 42 balls) engineered a stunning comeback and fittingly finished the match with a straight six off Bhuvneshwar Kumar.
When you’re under pressure life gets a little bit tough. Credit to the way Faf batted, he batted beautifully. To be fair, that’s not what I look at in terms of where we need to correct ourselves. With the bat, we could have taken some better options in order to get 15 or 20 more runs on that surface.Kane Williamson, SRH Captain
“But the way we fought back with the ball, the loss is very tough to swallow because we back our death bowling in close games. We have been on the right side on a number of those results throughout the league and today wasn’t to be,” added Williamson.
Carlos Brathwaite gave away 20 runs in the 18th over while Shardul Thakur was hit for 17 runs in the next. Captain Williamson felt that while the bowlers were “outstanding”, there were some other areas that the Sunrisers needed to improve on.
I think the bowlers were outstanding today. There are a number of other areas we would like to touch before going into the next game but death bowling is our strength. Frustrating, but we’re off to Kolkata next and it’s important we show some signs of improvement there.Kane Williamson, SRH Captain
Sunrisers Hyderabad next play the winner of the Eliminator – scheduled to be played between Kolkata Knight Riders and Rajasthan Royals on 23 May – in Qualifier 2.
For complete IPL coverage, click here to visit our IPL website.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)