“David Warner after Sunrisers Hyderabad’s maiden title win: “[It’s a] fantastic team achievement and for me personally it’s overwhelming. But, we batted well, bowled well, and fielded well.
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SRH added 19 in the fifth over and a further 13 in the sixth over to finish the Powerplay period on a high.
Having taken his T20 career run-tally past 9,000 earlier, Gayle blasted another six straight down the ground in the next over to reach his fifty off just 25 balls, while Kohli (54 off 35) had just reached his double figures at the other end.
“What a leader, Virat Kohli”, Warner said. Sachin Baby hit six off the last ball as RCB’s requirement of final over was 18 runs but Bhuvneshwar kept his cool to win the match for Sunrisers.
Warner carried on, joined by Yuvraj Singh, who continued his recent good form with 38 off 23 balls, with two big sixes and four boundaries. He bludgeoned 52 runs off the last three overs, smashing three sixes and as many boundaries to rack up the highest total ever posted in an IPL final.
Watson endured a bad outing with the ball, conceding 61 runs in his four wicketless overs.
Warner fell in the 14th over and Yuvraj in the 17th but Ben Cutting’s 15-ball blitz ensured they had enough on the board for their bowlers. The Jamaican attempted to heave across the line, but the ball came of the toe of the bat and carried to deep thirdman where Bipul Sharma held on to a sharp catch. That is when RCB’s other pillar, AB de Villiers came to the party, soaking in the pressure with more than half the side back in the hut, and took the team home comfortably. I can’t take it away from him. The 27-year-old RCB skipper became the first man to smash four hundreds in a single edition of the IPL and the first to breach the 900-run mark. Three balls later though, he dragged the ball back onto his stumps. RCB finished their twenty overs at 200-7.
To be sure, if one looks at the batting statistics in IPL 9, it has been a Virat Kohli show all the way with 919 runs to his credit.
Match Preview: This is what people have been waiting to see, this is the match that we all have been waiting for, and this is the real clash of the titans as confident Virat Kohli led Royal Challengers Bangalore lock horns against staring David Warner led Sunrisers Hyderabad in the finals of Indian Premier League 2016!
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Cutting gave Hyderabad their first breakthrough to send back the unsafe Gayle, who smoked four fours and eight sixes during his 38-ball stay at the crease.
