“If Pat Cummins is your team’s second-highest run-scorer, your batting would have been very ordinary” – Aakash Chopra after SRH loss vs MI

Former Indian Test opener Aakash Chopra feels Sunrisers Hyderabad’s batting was mundane after their seven-wicket loss against Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai on Monday. After being put into bat by MI skipper Hardik Pandya, MI could only manage 173 runs on the board.

Travis Head top-scored with 48 but SRH lost five wickets for 40 runs to falter from 56-0 to 96-5. In fact, it looked like that the Orange Army will fail to cross the 150-run mark but skipper Pat Cummins’ cameo of 17-ball 35 helped them propel to 173.

Head, Marcos Jansen and Nitish Reddy got off to starts but none of them could go on to make a big score for the team.

“The team reached beyond 170 in the end and the main reason for that was Pat Cummins. Imagine, if Pat Cummins is your team’s second-highest run-scorer, your batting would have been very ordinary, there is no doubt about that. However, Pat batted well,” Aakash Chopra said on his YouTube Channel.

Chopra reckons Hardik Pandya could have had a more aggressive field at the fag end of the innings as SRH had lost eight wickets.

“In the end, I felt Mumbai allowed them to score those many runs because there was no attempt to get them out in the last three overs. Even for (Jasprit) Bumrah, the field was set so that a boundary shouldn’t be hit, but only two wickets were left,” Chopra explained.

“You could have tried a little more to get them out. Such things are not discussed when you win. When you lose, you say this or that was wrong,” the former KKR player added.

Meanwhile, MI debutant Anshul Kamboj didn’t have the rub of the green on his side as he got a wicket of a no-ball and also had a catch dropped off his bowling. Chopra lauded veteran leg-spinner Piyush Chawla, who got the big wickets of Travis Head, Heinrich Klaasen and Abdul Samad.

“Hardik decided to field first. The start was not good. They were bowling wides here and there. Anshul (Kamboj) got a wicket but it turned out to be a no-ball. Then he could have dismissed (Travis) Head again but the catch was dropped. Bumrah took the first wicket,” he said.

“Anshul eventually got Mayank Agarwal out. He hit his stumps. Piyush Chawla was working yesterday, is working today, and it seems like will work tomorrow as well. PC is still working in the world of iPad and mobile. He picked up three wickets and Hardik Pandya also took three wickets,” Chopra added.

Sunrisers Hyderabad will next take on Lucknow Super Giants at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium, Hyderabad on Wednesday.