Rajasthan Royals captain Riyan Parag did not shy away from admitting his team’s poor performance in the powerplay, but praised SRH’s fast bowlers for their quality spells. He also praised the team’s batting depth, highlighting the team’s comeback after a poor start.
This was the first time that Parag had lost this season; However, he always looks like a happy soul, even when he lost all his matches as captain in IPL 2025, before winning some of them.
Rajasthan Royals finally lost their first game of the season, and after a poor performance with the bat against Sunrisers, they still top the points table. Sunrisers have taken a huge leap in the IPL points table and have now confirmed their place in the top 4.
Sunrisers led by Ishan Kishan scored a total of 200+
Rajasthan Royals captain Riyan Parag won the toss and decided to bowl first, which did not seem like the right decision at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad. However, Jofra Archer made a great start by dismissing the most dangerous batsman Abhishek Sharma on the very first ball.
However, Ishan Kishan opened the innings with a brilliant knock of 91 as he formed two partnerships with Travis Head and Heinrich Klaasen. After Kishan was out, Heinrich Klaasen along with Nitish Kumar Reddy took the match forward.
The runs piled up and they set a huge target of 217 runs, which could be the second highest score to be achieved at this ground. Now it was the turn of SRH bowlers, who had failed to defend the highest score in recent times.
Indian uncapped debutant pacers have done wonders for SRH with the ball.
Sunrisers Hyderabad have struggled to bowl well and have lost matches despite scoring 200+ runs in the competition. Sunrisers handed debut caps to Indian uncapped fast bowlers Saqib Hussain and Prafulla Hinge.
Hinge took charge of the new ball and miraculously struck three times in a single over, breaking the backbone of RR’s batting order. Shakib dismissed Yashasvi Jaiswal in the second over and then Hinz dismissed RR captain Riyan Parag in the third over.
With five wickets falling in 3 overs within the powerplay, the Royals had certainly lost any hope of getting back into the game. A big partnership between Ravindra Jadeja and Donovan Ferreira took them to some respectable scores.
After 58 runs were distributed between the two bowlers in 8 overs, Shakib and Prafulla took 4-4 wickets. Ishan Malinga took the remaining two wickets and won the match by a huge margin of 57 runs.
“There’s not a lot of time to process emotions, to be honest.” – Ryan Pollen
Riyan Parag was honest about the outcome of the match, “To be honest, there is not much time to process the emotions. We lost wickets consecutively, the credit goes to their bowling. There were probably some miscalculations from our side too, but we will just take it as a blip and not think too much about it. It was really great.”
“I thought the second bowling could have been better, probably because we lost wickets early. With the new ball it was a bit sticky, even though it had shine. Once the shine went off, it became a bit slow. In the end, we could have bowled second, but there are many things we could have done better.”
“From a batting perspective, having five wickets down for nine runs and still getting to 160 says a lot about the depth in our batting. There are definitely positives in that, it could have been much worse, and we had strong partnerships there too. As I said, it’s just a blip. We are moving towards Kolkata and trying to do better,” Riyan Parag expressed confidence in his team’s strong batting depth.
Also Read: IPL Points Table 2026: Updated Standings, Orange Cap, Purple Cap after SRH vs RR Match 21
