How KKR blunted SRH's front-loaded charge

On a draining 40-degree Hyderabad afternoon, Pat Cummins returned with the old ball in the 11th over in search of a breakthrough. KKR were 105 for 1, exactly the score SRH had been earlier in the day when their innings began to come apart. The SRH captain went round the wicket to Ajinkya Rahane and Angkrish Raghuvanshi, banged the ball short and spread the leg-side trap with fine leg, deep square leg and deep midwicket in place. A couple of balls into the ploy, Heinrich Klaasen walked up for a quick word and soon there was a deep point as well, cutting off the upper cut and leaving the two KKR batters with one obvious scoring option against the short ball: roll the pulls along the ground.

It was a sensible enough plan and one that had served KKR rather well with the ball earlier in the day. Four of their wickets had come to that hard short length on a slow surface being used for the third time this season. The difference was that unlike SRH, who had chosen to set a total, KKR did not need to challenge those boundary riders. They could keep the chase moving in ones and twos, keep hitting along the ground, because there were no Sunil Narine and Varun Chakaravarthy operating from the other end. And because the harder work had already been done.

It had come much earlier in the afternoon, when KKR's larger task was to make sure this did not become one of those matches that are now increasingly decided in the first six overs. Under the Impact Player rule, games have steadily been front-loaded, with teams batting harder in the Powerplay because the rewards of getting ahead early are now simply too great.

Between SRH's left-handed top three, who came into this game averaging 38.42 at a strike-rate of 191.74 this season, and KKR's right-handed top three, with the worst average and second-worst strike-rate this season, this looked especially primed to follow that pattern. And for a while, it threatened to.

KKR had their early counters lined up. There was a bowler each for SRH's opening pair to get through, someone they have traditionally lacked complete freedom against. Head's returns against Narine had come at a strike-rate of 95. Abhishek's against Vaibhav Arora have come at just over 70. But SRH manoeuvred those overs smartly. Abhishek faced five of the six balls in Narine's opening over and helped collect nine. Head then faced five of the six from Vaibhav's first, which went for 17. When Narine returned immediately after, Head was a touch more set, scoring 10 off five balls from the offspinner.

Finn Allen effectively closed the chase in the Powerplay

SRH were 71 for 1 in the Powerplay, having negotiated those early matchups well. But KKR, having kept SRH from running away, were reading that passage differently. "I think they batted really well, I must say, but it was about – in the Powerplay – just minimising it because we knew that obviously we have two great spinners," Angkrish said later.

The runs kept coming after the Powerplay too. Head got to a half-century and Ishan Kishan settled in as SRH got to 105 for 1, looking set for the kind of total Cummins later felt should have gone beyond 180.

The real break came when Chakaravarthy cramped Head for room and that wicket changed the innings. Klaasen, with his unreal numbers against KKR's mystery spinners, looked the obvious man to keep SRH surging but Rahane did not let that matchup breathe. The right-hander got only four balls from Narine before KKR pivoted to Cameron Green, whose short ball combined with Rovman Powell's tumbling one-handed take to deliver the big breakthrough.

With Narine and Varun operating in tandem, a softer ball beginning to grip, and an inexperienced middle order further thinned by the absence of the unwell Nitish Reddy, the innings went down a familiar path. From 105 for 1, SRH lost nine wickets for 60 and were bowled out for 165.

Daniel Vettori felt SRH could still have pushed through that softer-ball phase and launched once the two main spinners were done. But Narine knocking over Kishan with the final ball of the 16th over – also the last ball of his four-over spell – had already taken away the last established batter before the final push. The collapse had done its job.

"As the ball got older, I think it was probably more the softness of the ball rather than the pitch," the SRH head coach said. "We had an opportunity just to get through that period to try and set up for the last four or five overs once the spinners had finished their allotment of overs. Just the losing of wickets at crucial times and probably the manner as well where we had the opportunity to get through that period and to lose those wickets… hurt us."

Still, keeping SRH to a below-par total was only half the hard work done by KKR. Their top three had come into this game with numbers that hardly invited blind trust even in a chase of 166. But this time, they levelled up. Finn Allen, back after low returns earlier in the season, provided exactly the thrust KKR have lacked at the top. His quick runs meant Rahane did not have to manufacture pace from ball one. It meant Angkrish could settle. And by the end of six overs, KKR were 71 for 1 too, matching the very front-loading they had spent the afternoon containing.

"When we saw that Finn was in the team, we knew that we were presented with a difficult challenge because of his ability to be so explosive, particularly against fast bowling," Vettori said. "That's why we went with Abishek in the first over to try and mitigate that. You have to be nigh on perfect. We've had two overs against him. I think they've gone for 27 and 28.

"It's a testament to his quality but you're always looking for those slight improvements. Those one or two big overs can really affect the game and today was the case."

Which is why it mattered little what field Cummins set from there. KKR did not need anything heroic, for they had already done enough to make the rest of the chase routine.