Room for improvement for Sunrisers: Sandeep Sharma

On Thursday, Rishabh Pant’s blistering knock went in vain as Sunrisers Hyderabad thrashed Delhi Daredevils by nine wickets in their IPL clash at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium in the national capital to book their spot in playoffs. 

Following the win, Sandeep insisted that though Sunrisers was performing well, it still needed to work on every department to improve its chances of making it to the final. 

“There is no team or player who is perfect. There are a lot of things that we need to improve like fielding, game awareness, even batting or bowling can be further improved. It doesn’t matter how well you are doing, there is still room for improvement. 

Going forward, we need to have plans for a player like Rishabh, who is playing really well on a given day. We need to figure out how to reduce the damage he does. So we’ll discuss that in the remaining matches,” Sandeep said in a post-match conference. 

Opting to bat first, Pant smashed a brilliant knock of 128 runs off 63 balls as Delhi went on to post a score of 187-5 in their stipulated 20 overs. 

Hyderabad’s bowling has been good in the season so far, having helped the side defend scores of 146, 151, 132 and 118. But, it was put to test at the Kotla as 67 runs were leaked in the final four overs of the innings. 

Sunrisers Hyderabad, however, later went on to win the match, thanks to brilliant batting performance by Shikhar Dhawan (92) and Kane Williamson (83) with seven balls to spare. Though Sandeep heaped praises on Pant for his impressive batting performance, he refused to admit that his side’s bowlers performed badly.