Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: The joy, celebration and excitement were sky high in the Sunrisers Hyderabad camp after they cruised to a 10-run win against five-time champions Chennai Super Kings in their IPL 2026 match at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad on Saturday. It was not just a win – the celebrations were also about breaking into the top four of the points table.SRH are now placed fourth, with three wins and three defeats in six matches. They have six points to their kitty.After the victory, the SRH players looked elated, and when the cameras panned to the stands, their owner Kavya Maran was also seen celebrating energetically.A strong death bowling display, led by fiery spells from Eshan Malinga and Nitish Kumar Reddy, helped Sunrisers Hyderabad beat Chennai Super Kings by 10 runs.With this defeat, CSK are in seventh place, with two wins and four losses.CSK opted to bowl first, and half-centuries from Abhishek Sharma (59 in 22 balls, with six fours and four sixes) and Heinrich Klaasen (59 in 39 balls, with six fours and two sixes) powered SRH to 194/9.During the chase of 195, CSK stayed in the contest thanks to contributions from Ayush Mhatre (30 in 13 balls, with five fours and a six), Matthew Short (34 in 30 balls, with three fours) and Sarfaraz Khan (25 in 16 balls, with three fours). However, spells from Eshan (3/29), Nitish (2/31), Sakib Hussain (1/32) and Shivang Kumar (1/18) kept the pressure on CSK in the second half, leaving them 10 runs short.“Lovely. When you have a bunch of young bowlers and you know they’re executing their plans well. They’re coming up with their own plans as well and bowling as per the plan. So it’s very good to see, you know, there’s a lot of less pressure on the captain to set the field because they are ahead of the game anyway. So it was lovely to see them doing their job today. (were they 20 short?) Yeah, 100% I feel, Abhishek got out pretty early, but still, after scoring 60-odd runs, always when we have ended up scoring 220, 230,” SRH captain Ishan Kishan said after the win.“We’ve always seen there are…. from the first three batters, there’s one batsman is always scored big runs. So we were missing on that today, but especially with this team, with this batting line-up, I feel, yes, we were 20 runs short maybe. (trusting his young bowlers) Yeah, actually looking at them in practice sessions, giving their best, trying to get better and better day by day. So you have to trust your bowlers,” he said.“This is a bunch of bowlers we have at this point of time and I think they are very keen on doing well. So that is the time when you just give them the ball and let them do what they want to. (on the pitch) I think it was a pretty good wicket to bat on, to be very honest. That’s why I’m saying we were, I think, 30-40 runs short. But yeah, a lot to learn from this game as well. Looking at the shot selection, I think we could have done better. (on the points table) Nah, to be very honest, we’re not looking at the points table right now. I know it’s a very long tournament. We need to keep our head down, take a game day by day, just one match at a time and let’s see how it goes,” he said.SRH will next face Delhi Capitals on April 21 at the same venue.
