Punjab Kings ended their campaign on a winning note, crushing an already demoralized Sunrisers Hyderabad by five wickets in an insignificant final IPL league game here on Sunday. Sunrisers Hyderabad, who batted first, only managed 157 for 8 on a good batting course. But it would never be enough as Liam Livingstone smashed an unfortunate SRH attack, scoring 49 not from 22 balls and also hitting the coveted 1000th six of the tournament. Shikhar Dhawan (39 off 32 balls) and Jitesh Sharma (19 off 7 balls) also contributed greatly to the team’s cause as the chase was completed in just 15.1 overs.
Punjab Kings, who have not made the play-offs since their last appearance in 2014, finished sixth while the Sunrisers finished their high-spending IPL eighth in the 10-team league.
For Livingstone, it was all about breaking big sixs as he hit a total of five, while Dhawan helped himself to two fours and two sixes.
It was Jonny Bairstow (23 from 15 balls) who immediately attacked Bhuvneshwar Kumar and Washington Sundar, using a flurry of boundaries to set the pace.
It helped Dhawan play his ramping game as Punjab maintained their full attack philosophy even when Sunrisers dropped some of the sitters on the pitch.
Worst of all was Washington Sundar’s blooper when Livingstine tried to hit Jagadeesha Suchit on the turn and offered a dolly on point.
There were too many problems on the field with Roamrio Shepherd’s 15th for 23 runs.
Previously, Punjab Kings bowlers showed great discipline, limiting SRH to 157 for 8 in 20 overs. Arshdeep Singh (0/25 in 4 overs) celebrated his first call-up in India with another sparse spell, but it was his state team colleague Harpreet Brar (3/26 in 4 overs) who was the choice of the bowlers with wickets from Priyam Garg, Rahul Tripathi and Aiden Markram.
With four qualifiers already decided on Saturday, there was little more than academic interest in the game and the ‘Orange Army’ in fact looked jaded and looked more like a continuous battle as it batted before putting their scores in the last few overs improved.
SRH’s best hitter of the season, Abhishek Sharma (43 from 32 balls) got another start, but should have turned it into a big one, which didn’t happen.
A solemn-looking Tripathi (20) did hit a personal milestone of 400 runs for the season, but the disappointment that he didn’t make the national team was big in his body language as he failed to connect the big hits.
Brar didn’t do anything out of the ordinary and mostly kept it on the stumps, choking the opposing batters for runs.
It was left to Romario Shepherd (26 out of 15 balls) and Washington Sundar (25 out of 19 balls) to take the Sunrisers past the 150-run as they both used the long lever to good effect in their 58-run sixth- wicket partnership of just 4.5 overs.
In fact, over 50 runs came to the last four overs when Nathan Ellis (3/40 in 4 overs) made an error in length despite getting a couple of back-to-back wickets into the bargain.
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Ellis threw a good hat-trick delivery that averted Bhuvneshwar Kumar only to hit the next pitch.
(This story was not edited by DailyExpertNews staff and was generated automatically from a syndicated feed.)
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