IPL 2016, SRH vs RCB: Flab in the middle doesn’t matter when you have muscle at top

PHOTOS: Pacers bowl SRH to maiden IPL title win

But Sunrisers needn’t have worried. Warner’s 38-ball 69 had turbo-charged them to 125 for three in 13.3 overs. There was Yuvraj Singh in seemingly silken touch at the other end. Deepak Hooda, Naman Ojha and Ben Cutting all have the aptitude to clear the ropes. Surely. Then there’s their new-found late-order saviour Bipul Sharma. But maybe Sunrisers had to worry. For, they have unarguably the most fickle middle order in the league, as fickle as maybe Real Madrid’s managerial preferences.

In the entire season, only two of their seven middle-order batsman managed to cross 50. Those were England T20 skipper Eoin Morgan and his Kiwi counterpart Kane Williamson. Morgan wrenched it on April 16, against Kolkata Knight Riders. In the next four matches, his combined total was a run less than that score. Williamson, after a promising string of 30-plus scores, wrung up his half century on April 30. But his next five outings fetched him just 74 runs. This was in short a microcosm of their storied travails to assemble a half-decent middle order.

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Their maladies began at number three (it actually began with number two when Shikhar Dhawan was struggling). First they threw in Aussie all-rounder Moises Henriques into it. He was a certified disaster in that role. Then was Mumbai Ranji skipper Aditya Tare. A doughty batsman, and largely unused to the rigours of IPL, he seemed too callow for the role. He was ditched. Next was Kane Williamson’s turn, and he asserted his stakes with a 38-ball 50, reinforcing that he is better-utilised at number 3 than bat down the order. But a subsequent slump saw him jettisoned, and displaced with young Deepak Hooda, who like Williamson made a great first impression, crunching 34 off 22 balls against Kings XI Punjab. But it was always going to be difficult for the youngster to make the slot his own, and pushed down the order for Naman Ojha, who laborious 15 off 25 against Kolkata Knight Riders prompted the team strategists to revert to their oldest experiment—Henriques in the Eliminator. He wasn’t an abject failure, as he did manage a vital 31 in qualifier two. But overall, the Australian of Portuguese descent was at best of middling utility—managing only 182 runs in 15 innings at a strike rate of 115, and tortured in most of his outings.

The deficiencies of their number three would have been masked if Yuvraj Singh was in his wonted touch. But as has been his habit of late, he flickered only sporadically. After missing the whole of April due to a knee injury, Sunrisers must have desperately hoped for him to give them the middle-over impetus. In the end, he was their most successful middle-order batsman—logging in 236 runs at 26.22 at a strike rate of 131.84. But that isn’t saying much, or should be put in perspective with the alarming mediocrity around him. He wasn’t insuperable by any means—used as we are to his lofty standards — but still he reeled off a couple of significant knocks — like the 44 off 30 balls in the eliminator, and then in the final, his most eye-catchy effort in the IPL, wherein he showed some lingering shades of the audacious Yuvraj of the yore.

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Amidst all of them, the most disappointing was Ojha, more than Hooda because the latter is still callow and cutting his teeth in, and there were stray glimpses that he has the requisites to succeed in the future.

Ojha’s ineptitude was more glaring, as he has shown in the past that he clearly has the potential to thrive in IPL, but has, through a lack of muddled thinking and injudicious strokeplay, contrived to under-utilise his talents. Maybe, Warner could have given more opportunities to Morgan, who despite the indifferent form, is a match-winner on his day. At least, he induces the fear factor into the bowlers.

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But in the big juggle of balancing the team, Warner had to leave him out to accommodate their two Aussie all-rounders, Henriques and Cutting, and the irrepressible Mustafizur Rahman.

So when Warner was dismissed, there again was that sneaking hunch that Hyderabad would implode. They did, losing three more wickets with the addition of 33 runs. The pursuit of 200, which once-seemed certain, looked less certain.

PHOTOS: SRH celebrate maiden IPL title win

That they did manage to pile up a total that intimidated, and eventually match-winning, their opponents was courtesy of Cutting, who chose the most opportune time to display his wares. Until this match, he had managed just 26 runs off three innings, but here his death-over blitz gave Hyderabad that extra cushion of runs. Much like Bipul Sharma in the qualifier, whose runs and support to Warner was invaluable.

Hyderabad, in that way was lucky. They had a skipper who was in murderous form throughout the tournament, then his opening partner who found form just at the right time and them some unprecedented contributions from unexpected quarters. The game, sometimes, is not a sum of their collective parts.