Kamal Ghorui
HYDERABAD: It was a tale of two debutants and how they consigned Rajasthan Royals to their first defeat in IPL-2026 on Monday.Praful Hinge (4/34) from Vidarbha and Sakib Hussain (4/24) of Bihar, the former 24 and the latter 21, couldn’t have asked for a better start to their IPL careers. Steaming in and hitting the hard lengths was all they did as Rajasthan Royals committed hara-kiri. The poise with which they overhauled RCB’s 201/8 a few days ago was clearly missing and poor shot selection added to their woes in the 57-run defeat.Hinge, one of the two changes SRH made, struck with the second, fourth and sixth deliveries of the first over to break the back of the visiting side. It seemed the Royals lacked the stomach to fight after Vaibhav Sooryavanshi top-edged an intended pull into the hands of wicketkeeper Salil Arora off the first ball he faced. Dhruv Jurel lasted one delivery and so did debutant Lhuan-dre Pretorius.Yashasvi Jaiswal steered ‘Impact Player’ Hussain — who came in for Travis Head — straight to Nitish Reddy at third man and when skipper Riyan Parag succumbed to Hinge, the Royals had lost half their side for a paltry nine runs in the third over.Despite a spirited attempt by Donovan Ferreira (69; 44b, 7×4, 3×6) and Ravindra Jadeja (45; 32b, 5×4) and their 118-run (72b) partnership for the sixth wicket, the Royals, who finished at 159, needed 146 from the last 10 and 89 from the last five.Sunrisers Hyderabad’s total of 216/6, thanks in the main to Ishan Kishan, proved beyond them on a shirtfront used for the first time at the Rajiv Gandhi International stadium. Kishan (91; 44b, 8×4, 6×6) may have lost his fifth successive toss but the diminutive SRH skipper hardly put a foot wrong on the day.The Royals’ joy of Jofra Archer dismissing Abhishek Sharma for his seventh duck with the first delivery of the match was shortlived as Kishan stepped up to undo the early damage.
