IPL Final: The Big ‘IF’ That Dragged Sunrisers Down

If the pair of Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma blasts away in the powerplay overs and beyond then…It was a big IF on which hinged the chances of Sunrisers Hyderabad lifting the IPL trophy this year. But great victories are not made of ‘ifs’, they are about certainties. The certainties of balance, strategy and execution.

For a team that redefined the possible with record scores this season – 287, 277, 266 and a chase of 167 in less than ten overs – to be bowled out for 113 in the finals was anti-climatic. The low score would still be fine if SRH had made the Knights struggle hard to reach there. Low-scoring matches sometimes are the most thrilling, aren’t they? But the latter took less than 11 overs to finish it off. It’s an insult added to injury. Sunrisers didn’t even make a match of it.

The warning was loud and clear in the Qualifier 1. They were vulnerable if the openers didn’t fire and the bowling unit didn’t have enough firepower to launch a destructive fightback. They were restricted to 159 in that encounter and it was overhauled by KKR in 13.4 overs with eight wickets to spare. The weaknesses on both batting and bowling fronts were exposed in that match. The 36-run win against Rajasthan Royals probably lulled them into complacency.

Sunrisers had an amazing season, with spectacular individual performances. Heinrich Klaasen scored 479 runs, Head 569 and Abhishek 484 runs. That probably was their strength and weakness too. Strength because it brought them to the finals, weakness because it left little scope for the solidity of the team to be tested. The batters at the top just made things too easy for them. The Knights on the other hand had contributions from everywhere all through. The team looked ready to go from the beginning. Thanks to coach Gautam Gambhir the clarity in thinking was never out of the picture.

When they met in the finals, it was a match between individual brilliance and team effort. Sunrisers were more in the RCB mould and the Knights in that of MS Dhoni-led CSK. RCB has always been about heroic performances from players rather than consistent team effort. CSK, with more cold tactical thinking, is the opposite. So at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, SRH required its big guns to fire, and fire really well. The tone had to be set, as in the previous games, in the first six overs. Of course, that didn’t happen. The rest is known.

If Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma had scored at a blistering pace for long enough it could have been a different story. But ‘if’ is not what one can bank on whether it’s war or sport.

(By arrangement with Perspective Bytes)