SRH coach Daniel Vettori during IPL 2025 match against CSK. (Sportzpics for IPL)
When Sunrisers Hyderabad snapped their two-match losing streak after beating Chennai Super Kings in the Indian Premier League 2025 match at Chepauk on Friday to keep themselves afloat in the playoffs race, one player — Sri Lanka’s Kamindu Mendis — proved to be the difference between the two teams.
After being invited to bat, Chennai were skittled out for 154 in 19.5 overs with Harshal Patel shining with a four-wicket haul in an innings that also saw ambidextrous Mendis take a stunner at wide-off to remove set batter Dewald Brevis.
It happened in the 13th over with Brevis batting at 42 slapped Harshal over the inner circle only to find a flying Mendis, who stretched both his hands like a football goalkeeper and grabbed hold of the ball, sending the South African back to reduce CSK to 114/5.
Kamindu outfoxed Ravindra Jadeja with an arm ball, cleaning him off when he was batting on 21.
SRH coach Daniel Vettori praised ambidextrous Mendis for his bowling. “I think I probably didn’t quite appreciate how good his bowling was with both arms. His ability to go back and forward and control his pace is a real skill. So, at least to give us one option to take it away (from the batters), it just balanced our team perfectly,” said Vettori after the match.
Vettori also said that working around their batting line-up and getting the match-ups right with Mendis in the mix served the team well against CSK. He said moving around their players was crucial for SRH against CSK as Mendis played a vital role both with the bat and the ball.
“That’s why the likes of Kamindu came into the team. That’s why there was the shuffle in the batting order, putting (Heinrich) Klaasen up, Nitish (Kumar Reddy) down, to give us a more balanced approach to a chase in particular,” he said.
“The initial plan was around left-right-hand combinations, and that’s in a way to counter Noor (Ahmad) and Jaddu (Ravindra Jadeja) and how good they are through those middle stages.” “A lot of the logic was picking him (Mendis) for this ground. We knew what sort of surface we’d come up against and to have a batsman who can play all types of spin, be aggressive, and hit a multitude of shots, that was the starting point,” he added.
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