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Rajasthan Royals (RR) pacer Avesh Khan once again showed why his ability to pick up wickets in the middle overs has been invaluable. He scalped the big wickets of Nitish Kumar Reddy and Abdul Samad on successive deliveries during their IPL 2024 Qualifier 2 against the SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) on Friday, May 24.
Avesh had been bowling the wide line outside off-stump and Reddy tried to play the reverse sweep over Yuzvendra Chahal at third man. However, Chahal timed his jump to perfection and picked up his third catch of the evening.
Abdul Samad then walked out to bat and the idea would have been to stitch together a partnership with Heinrich Klaasen. However, Avesh Khan bowled a brilliant delivery first up that nipped back off the seam and took the off pole out.
While Reddy made five off 10 balls, Samad was dismissed for a duck.
Here's a video of both the dismissals:
Avesh bowled his second over during a time when both Reddy and Klaasen had their eye in and looked keen to up the ante. However, his two wickets forced SRH to use all-rounder Shahbaz Ahmad as the impact substitute instead of saving it for an extra bowling option.
RR make a sensational comeback to restrict SRH to 175/9
It was clear that wickets at regular intervals would be the only feasible way for RR to keep the explosive SRH batting line-up in check. That's exactly how things transpired as they managed to restrict the Sunrisers to 175/9 in their 20 overs. It seemed a tricky task when the batters were going all guns blazing at one stage.
Rahul Tripathi's cameo of 37 ensured that SRH had the momentum despite Abhishek Sharma's early wicket. However, Trent Boult sent back both Tripathi and Aiden Markram inside the powerplay to inflict the first big dent in that batting line-up.
From thereon, SRH kept losing wickets at regular intervals. Boult ended up with figures of 3/45, while Avesh also picked up three scalps (3/27) and Sandeep Sharma chipped in with two (2/25). SRH will now need to defend 176 against RR to make it to the final.
