Warner 90 steals the show to give Sunrisers their first win

A WONDERFUL UNBEATEN 90 from skipper David Warner saw the Sunrisers Hyderabad open their account in the Indian Premier League against the Mumbai Indians after the hosts put the visitors in on winning the toss on a relatively good batting track.

Chasing a modest 143 for a win, SR had a slow start after they lost opener Shikhar Dhawan to a Tim Southee incoming delivery to lose his middle stump. The Kiwi was the most successful bowler for MI as he went on to take 3/24 in his four overs, but the other bowlers kept delivering loose balls for Warner to dispatch to the boundary consistently.

The second highest scorer for SR was Moises Henriques with 20, which only shows Warner's dominance in the SR innings. Warner's knock came in just 59 balls with seven fours and four maximums to his credit.

He cut and pulled everything that came his way, even jumping mid-air on one occasion to loft one over cover for six.

Earlier in the day, Warner hoped for early breakthrougs after he put MI in and found immediate success as Martin Guptill edged a Bhuvaneshwar Kumar-delivery, facing his fourth ball. The Black Cap was making his MI debut in place of Kieron Pollard, who missed out due to food poisoning.

The innings never found momentum as the other opener Parthiv Patel was bowled by Barinder Sran soon after, trying to loft one over the mid-wicket boundary. In came Jos Buttler and a self-demoted Rohit Sharma, who ran himself out trying to take a non-existing single. Buttler, too didn't last long and perished in the 11th over with the score now at 60/4.

Ambati Rayudu and Kunal Pandya had to rebuild the innings which they did by adding 63 in quick time for the fifth wicket. Pandya in particularly used the long handle to good use, clearing the boundary skirting thrice in the innings. Bipul Sharma was the victim of Pandya's onslaught in the closing stages of the innings.

The duo put MI in a strong position at the end of the 17th over, but some tight death bowling by Mustafizur Rahman, Sran and Kumar, giving away just 19 runs in the last three overs put the momentum back in the home team's favour.

Warner was the obvious choice for the Man of the Match award, giving his side their first win in the tourney, whilst the loss meant MI now had only one win from their four completed games.