Mumbai: Punjab Kings bowlers showed a lot of discipline against a demoralised Sunrisers Hyderabad, restricting them to 157 for 8 in an inconsequential final league game of the IPL here on Sunday. Arshdeep Singh (0/25 in 4 overs) celebrated his maiden India call-up with another parsimonious spell but it was his state team colleague Harpreet Brar (3/26 in 4 overs), who was the pick of the bowlers with wickets of Priyam Garg, Rahul Tripathi and Aiden Markram.
With four qualifiers already decided on Saturday, there was little more than academic interest left in the game and the 'Orange Army' in fact looked jaded and more like going through the motions while batting before sprucing up their scores in the final few overs.
Read: Thank you, Mumbai, we will remember this one: Kohli after MI's win seals RCB's playoff berth
SRH's best batter of the season, Abhishek Sharma (43 off 32 balls) once again got a start but should have converted it into a big one which didn't happen. A solemn looking Tripathi (20) did cross a personal milestone of 400 runs for the season but disappointment of not making it to the national team was writ large in his body language as he failed to connect the big hits.
Brar didn't do anything extraordinary and kept it mostly on the stumps, stifling the opposition batters for runs. It was left to Romario Shepherd (26 not out off 15 balls) and Washington Sundar (25 off 19 balls) to take the Sunrisers past the 150-run mark, as both of them used the long handle to good effect in their 58-run sixth-wicket partnership off only 4.5 overs.
In fact, 50-plus runs came in the last four overs as Nathan Ellis (3/40 in 4 overs) erred in length despite a couple of back-to-back wickets that he got in the bargain. Ellis did bowl a good hat-trick delivery which Bhuvneshwar Kumar averted only to get run-out of the very next delivery.
PTI
