Rajasthan Royals 243 for 8 (Sooryavanshi 97, Jurel 50, Hinge 3-54) beat Sunrisers Hyderabad 196 (Reddy 38, Arora 35, Kishan 33, Archer 3-58, Burger 2-26) by 47 runs

RR eventually won by 47 runs, setting up a meeting with Gujarat Titans in Qualifier 2 on Friday.

Sooryavanshi lays waste to SRH’s best-laid plans

How do you keep Sooryavanshi quiet? Every team in the IPL has tried to come up with a method, and none of them have worked. SRH went with something like death bowling in the powerplay, with Pat Cummins and Eshan Malinga attempting to go full and straight and deny Sooryavanshi elevation, with both their outfielders stationed in front of square on the leg side, with the occasional short ball thrown in as a surprise.

It was a plan with slim margins for error, and Sooryavanshi was ruthless on anything that even slightly missed its mark. If he got half a chance to get under a full ball, he did, timing the ball with crystalline purity. Anything short disappeared over the boundary behind square on the leg side.

Soon SRH began trying Plans B, C, R, W and so forth, and Sooryavanshi had an answer to everything, revelling particularly in holding his shape and driving slower balls over mid-off and extra-cover. If there was one thing SRH didn’t really try, it was to hold a traditional good length and see what came of it. Perhaps the flatness of this New Chandigarh track made them dismiss that as an option.

Sooryavanshi hit 12 sixes in 28 balls before falling to his occasional nemesis Praful Hinge in the eighth over of the match; at that point, this contest turned into something like a normal T20 game.

Jurel sparkles, RR slump

Imagine being Yashasvi Jaiswal. He remains one of India’s most accomplished T20 openers, but who can match Sooryavanshi’s rate of six-hitting or run-scoring? On this day life must have been even more surreal for Jaiswal; he faced exactly as many balls as his opening partner did, and scored 29 runs to Sooryavanshi’s 97.

When RR lost Jaiswal, they seemed in danger of squandering all the early momentum, but Jurel ensured that didn’t happen with his most enterprising innings of the season. It was his sixth fifty, but if the previous ones could be accused of being out of step with the times, this one was full of urgency and innovation, including a scooped four over short fine off Cummins and an uppercut six off Hinge to bring up his half-century in 20 balls.

RR slumped after Jurel’s dismissal, though, and dramatically at that. They scored just 36 in the last five overs, losing five wickets in that period including the run-out dismissals of Donovan Ferreira and Nandre Burger. The latter summed up the dysfunctional finish: Ravindra Jadeja, the last recognised batter, had taken a single off the first ball of the final over and given up the strike, and Burger was run out attempting a non-existent second run off the next ball.

Archer kills the contest in frenetic powerplay

RR’s poor finish meant this was anyone’s game. Archer made them forget that finish briefly with a snorter to remove an awkwardly hooking Abhishek off the second ball of SRH’s innings, but Kishan and Head counterpunched immediately, taking 15 off that first over and 18 off Burger in the second.

The fifty came up inside the third over, as Kishan tore into Archer, but normalcy returned to proceedings when he mis-hit a slap to the fielder at cover. Burger put RR further in front with a good, hard-length ball to force a miscue from R Smaran in the fourth over, and the contest seemed all but over when Archer slipped a fast, full ball past Head and into the top of off as he tried to make room and flay it away.

SRH kept throwing punches, and they had no other choice with this being an Eliminator. There were two periods when they briefly threatened to come back into the contest. Heinrich Klaasen hit two fours and a breathtaking six over the covers in nine balls, but he was lbw missing a reverse-sweep off the legspinner Yash Raj Punja in the seventh over.

Then Nitish Kumar Reddy and Salil Arora put on a half-century stand in only 19 balls, taking SRH to 132 for 5 at the halfway point of the chase. But it was unlikely they could keep going at that rate without offering chances, and RR knew they could breathe easy once Reddy holed out off Jadeja in the 11th over.