Sunrisers Hyderabad won the toss and opted to bowl first but it was Rajasthan Royals who came out and put on a show to cruise to a big 61-run win in their season opener.
Superb knocks by Samson (55 off 27) and Padikkal (41 off 29) did the trick as RR reached 210/6 in their 20 overs. The duo put on 73 runs off 41 balls and the partnership really put the SRH bowlers under the pump.
But it wasn’t just them. The RR openers, Jos Buttler and Yashasvi Jaiswal, put on 58 in the first six overs to set up the platform for the batters to come. SRH, on their part, were hurt by their indiscipline.
Bhuvneshwar Kumar got Buttler’s wicket but it turned out to be a no-ball and that was that. The RR batters grew in confidence and smashed the SRH bowlers all over the park to take their total past 200.
For SRH, Washinton Sundar had a particularly poor day – conceding 37 runs in 3 overs. Umran Malik showed some really good pace to take two wickets but as a whole, the bowling unit just wasn’t consistent enough.
In reply, the SRH batters showed that they weren’t really feeling it either. Prasidh Krishna sent back Kane Williamson and Rahul Tripathi early while Trent Boult dismissed Nicolas Pooran for a duck.
SRH were reduced to 9/3 and they had a mountain to climb if they wanted to get back in the game. RR, however, was in no mood to dole out favours.
Sundar made amends for his poor show with the ball by hitting a sparkling 40 off 14 balls but it was too little and too late. The wickets kept falling and SRH eventually ended on 149/7, 61 runs short of the target.
For RR, on the bowling front, Krishna’s early blows were vital. They robbed the SRH innings of momentum and then Yuzvendra Chahal took three big wickets to ensure the chase never took off.