Nitish Kumar Reddy slammed a brilliant 64 as Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Punjab Kings by 2 runs in a thriller at the Maharaja Yadavindra Singh International Cricket Stadium Tuesday.
After being asked to bat first, Sunrisers openers Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma got their side off to a steady start. The pair added 27 runs for the opening wicket before the former (21) miscued a big hit off Arshdeep Singh to Shikhar Dhawan who took a fine running catch.
Two deliveries later, Aiden Markram nicked one behind the stumps for a duck. Abhishek (16) then mistimed a delivery from Sam Curran.
Abdul Samad’s late flourish in the end helped Sunrisers Hyderabad reach a competitive score of 182/9 in their allotted 20 overs.
Chasing 183, Punjab lost wickets of Jonny Bairstow, Prabhsimran Singh and Shikhar Dhawan with the score on 20. However Shashank Singh’s unbeaten 46, followed by breezy unbeaten 15 ball- 33 brought them close to the target. But their effort was not enough as Punjab Kings finished at 180/6, thereby falling 2 run short of the target.