Following their commanding win over Rajasthan Royals on Friday, Sunrisers Hyderabad cemented their place in the IPL 2024 final where they will face Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) on Sunday (May 26).
SRH’s bowling consisting of Shahbaz Ahmed, who came as an impact player, and Abhishek Sharma dismantled Rajasthan’s batting as both bowlers took five wickets combined for 47 runs in eight overs.
Rajasthan were on the right track in their chase of 176-run target but Shahbaz ended his four-over spell after giving just 23 runs for three wickets and was SRH’s best weapon with the ball.
Meanwhile, Sharma, Pat Cummins and T. Natarajan bagged one wicket each.
From Rajasthan, Yashasvi Jaiswal (42 off 21) and Dhruv Jurel (56 off 35) were the only batters to score some runs for the team.
SRH was at the bottom of the IPL in the last season. However, the franchise has performed so well in this season that it has advanced to the league finals.
SRH are only the second team who has reached the final after finishing bottom place in previous season after Deccan Chargers in 2009.
It is confirmed that, the KKR and SRH will come face to face for the final of the IPL 2024. KKR stayed at the top of the points table from the start. Meanwhile, SRH had to cross the more difficult path, losing to KKR in the first IPL qualifier but then bounced-back in the second knockout round.
SRH have reached the finals of the IPL twice before, first in 2016 during their title win against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), and in 2018, finishing runners-up against Chennai Super Kings.
Playing XIs
KKR Probable XI: Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Sunil Narine, Venkatesh Iyer, Shreyas Iyer (c), Nitish Rana, Rinku Singh, Andre Russell, Ramandeep Singh, Mitchell Starc, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakravarthy
KKR Impact Player: Vaibhav Arora/Suyash Sharma
SRH Probable XI: Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head, Rahul Tripathi, Heinrich Klaasen (wk), Nitish Reddy, Shahbaz Ahmed, Abdul Samad, Pat Cummins (c), Marco Jansen, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan