The Sunrisers Hyderabad continued to strengthen their stranglehold over Kolkata Knight Riders with a stunning catch by Abdul Samad to dismiss Rinku Singh. After a poor start, KKR captain Nitish Rana and Singh batted well to rescue the Kolkata innings.
But after Rana got out, Rinku Singh continued his stellar batting and took the two-time champions to a respectable score. In the 20th over, after a dot ball on the first delivery, Singh tried to maximise a low full toss by T Natarajan. The ball flew towards deep mid-wicket and Abdul Samad, stationed here, ran in before timing his dive perfectly and completed a stellar catch. After this wicket, KKR only managed to get three runs and finished at a score of 171.
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Reacting to this first inning's performance, Marco Jansen spoke about how the pitch has extra bounce which allowed him and other SRH to take a wicket-taking approach from ball one.
He said, "Very happy except for that no-ball, but otherwise very happy with my performance. We saw that there was quite a lot of bounce (on the pitch), so the plan was to hit the deck hard and get some lift from the surface. I want to have a wicket-taking mindset, so just go and try to execute the plan as much as possible."
Talking about the team's superb fielding, Janses thanked the team's fielding coach. He said, "Ryan Cook, our fielding coach, always helps us with catching practice, you don't see a lot of work done behind the scenes. It's gettable (on the target), will not be easy against some world-class bowlers, but a few partnerships will help us in the chase."