A newly rejuvenated Sunrisers Hyderabad were facing Gujarat Lions, one of the most consistent sides of IPL 2016. The Sunrisers have had a bag full of mixed results, in this season of IPL. Their squad strength has now been boosted with the two injured southpaws coming back, in the form of Yuvraj Singh and Ashish Nehra. It was going to be difficult to beat the Sun risers, for Gujarat Lions as they lost the toss and were put into bat.

SRH put on a superb performance making the most of the two-paced wicket and restricted GL to a below par score. GL batsmen struggled against the bowling of the pacers and couldn’t keep the scoreboard moving. Ashish Nehra bowled beautifully up front in tandem with Bhuvneshwar Kumar to pick up early wickets. After the fall of Dwayne Smith, skipper Raina tried to play an attacking innings, but Kumar showed some good reflexes of his own bowling to send the captain back. From there on Barinder Sran, Moises Henriques and Mustafizur Rahman kept their bowling disciplined and did not allow GL to score much. Aaron Finch who came down the order, was the only silver lining to the Lions innings as he scored a well-deserved half century off 42 balls to take their score to 126/6.

Warner was his usual self as he came all guns blazing and hammered 16 runs off Pradeep Sangwan, in the second over of the innings. He didn’t capitalise on the start he got, as he gifted his wicket to Dhawal Kulkarni from the first ball of his spell. SRH were jolted a few more times when they lost wickets in quick successions. Shikhar Dhawan slowly and steadily started building a platform for the chase. He anchored the innings with a patient and calculated 47 off 40 which included 6 fours. Naman Ojha finished the game for SRH in the penultimate over to secure another win for SRH. The sun risers would like to take inspiration from today’s performance as they face the defending champs in their next game.