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Sunrisers Hyderabad cruise to five-wicket win over Chennai in basement clash

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13 hoursCricket

The Indian Premier League's bottom two teams played out a tepid meeting at Chepauk on Friday, with Sunrisers Hyderabad cantering to a five-wicket win over the Chennai Super Kings.

Both sides came into the match in poor form, with their playoff hopes all but extinguished before a ball was bowled.

Chennai were put in to bat and saw their powerplay struggles persist as Mohammed Shami had youngster Shaik Rasheed caught at slip off the very first ball of the innings.

Ayush Mhatre provided some welcome fireworks with a blazing knock of 30 off 19, but his innings was cut short by Pat Cummins in the final over of the powerplay.

Harshal Patel was the standout performer of the match, picking up four crucial wickets for just 28 runs in his four overs.

CSK largely struggled to stitch together any meaningful partnerships, with wickets falling at both ends. Sam Curran (nine), Ravindra Jadeja (21) and Shivam Dube (12) fell relatively cheaply, putting the hosts in a tough spot.

Dewald Brevis, though, made his CSK debut as an injury replacement and added some much-needed firepower to the middle order. The South African batter scored 42 runs off 25 balls, striking one four and four sixes to give Chennai a fighting chance.

Brevis’ innings was cut short by a brilliant diving catch from Kamindu Mendis at long-off, effectively halting CSK in their tracks. Deepak Hooda (22), MS Dhoni (six) and Anshul Kamboj (two) showed little resistance as Chennai were bowled out in the 20th over for a middling total of 154.

SRH, though, saw their batting woes resurface as well, with Khaleel Ahmed getting Abhishek Sharma (0) caught at covers in the first over.

Travis Head (19) briefly stabilised the innings, along with Ishan Kishan, but the former was promptly dismissed in the sixth over. Kishan, searching for form and fluency, dug in and anchored SRH’s innings with a much-needed 44 off 34 balls to put them in pole position.

Despite losing the in-form Heinrich Klaasen (seven), the visitors barely needed to move out of second gear to complete the chase. Aniket Verma’s 19 off 19 helped, but it was Mendis (32 not out) and Nitish Kumar Reddy (19 not out) who saw Sunrisers home.

SRH move up to eighth in the table and have mathematically kept their playoff hopes alive, though they have a mountain to climb if they are to enter the top four. CSK, meanwhile, stay bottom of the table, level with Rajasthan Royals on four points.

Data debrief: SRH play spoilsport in Chennai as Dhoni crosses milestone 400

On Friday, Dhoni played his 400th T20 match, making him the fourth Indian to join the 400-club after Rohit Sharma (456), Dinesh Karthik (412) and Virat Kohli (407).

But there was to be no party, courtesy of a clinical performance from Sunrisers Hyderabad.

SRH had never won against CSK in Chennai prior to Friday’s encounter. But they followed in the footsteps of Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Delhi Capitals, who had ended waits of 17 and 15 years, respectively, to win on the ground this year.

Having also lost at home to Kolkata Knight Riders, this is the first time in 13 years that CSK have lost four matches at home in a single IPL season.