[sport] Is 2024 Indian Premier League changing face of T20 cricket as Sunrisers Hyderabad fire with the bat once more?

[-_-Moltres-_-]

 

I was commentating on the Sunrisers Hyderabad vs Lucknow Super Giants game and it suddenly dawned on me that the way to play T20 cricket is transforming before our eyes in this IPL. The contrast between the two teams was stark. Lucknow fought their way to 165 on a pitch that looked slow, tacky and difficult to score freely on. KL Rahul adopted his usual safety-first approach and once they had reached only 27-2 in the powerplay, 165 was about as good a score as they could have hoped for. What then happened in the Sunrisers' run-chase was nothing short of astonishing! Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma played as if they had not been watching the first innings. There were no thoughts about the slowness of the pitch, they literally just tried to hit every ball for six and the end result was a score of 107 without loss after six overs, the second-highest powerplay score of all time in men's T20 cricket (behind their own record of a scarcely believable 125 vs Delhi Capitals last month). The difference between the two teams' powerplays ended up being a staggering 80 runs. Sunrisers ended up chasing down their target in less than 10 overs, with a shell-shocked Rahul effusive in his praise of the top-order 'Travishek' combo (you'll be hearing this term a lot more I think). The bottom line, however, is that it was Rahul himself who was mainly responsible for the annihilation suffered by his side. The Super Giants played an old-school brand of T20 where they assessed the pitch, kept wickets in hand in the middle overs and then attacked at the end to get up to what looked like a defendable score. Except it wasn't. Those tactics don't work against sides who have two confident openers willing to chance their arm and who don't care about getting out early. Head and Abhishek put the bowlers under intense pressure from ball one and got more bad balls as a result, as even good bowlers tend to wilt in that situation.

https://www.skysports.com/cricket/news/12123/13132321/is-2024-indian-premier-league-changing-face-of-t20-cricket-as-sunrisers-hyderabad-fire-with-the-bat-once-more