Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky

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It was a night where the ballooning top-edge came to be a source of apprehension rather than anticipatory delight. Either since the ring-of-fire lighting blinded the fielders tracking the high ball or Shashank Singh passed on his catching curse indiscriminately to the boundary riders, the skyward projectile of the mishit was misjudged an embarrassing number of times in Hyderabad. Body positioning went haywire, with butterfingered hands flailing away from the torso to script a dropping spree that didn’t reflect well on what were protagonists in the upper echelon of IPL 2026.

Yuzvendra Chahal was the most hard done by. Having beaten Travis Head in the flight to halt Sunrisers Hyderabad after a scoreline of 79/1 vindicated their run-rate of 11.75 in the PowerPlay, he spun a web around Ishan Kishan and orange-cap holder Heinrich Klaasen only for the sitters to go down on the fence. The diminutive southpaw, in particular, lived a charmed life. He escaped a stumping opportunity off Chahal, taking his reprieve count to four given Cooper Connolly was the first victim of the virus. The left-right pair added an aggregate of 97 runs following their maiden moment of respite to set a target that spread even Punjab Kings thin despite each of their five wins materialising via chasing success.


Grabbing everything hit aerially towards you or, at least, not fumbling the straightforward collections is imperative because cricket is a game of small margins. Ask Harsh Dubey, whose plan to stick to the wide-line against a negative match-up in Connolly fell flat the instant his radar shifted towards the batter. The consecutive maximums ushered Punjab Kings to 91-4 at the halfway mark, with the casualties including Prabhsimran Singh who closed his bat face a smidgen early as Nitish Reddy found a hint of late away movement having worked alongside fast-bowling coach Steffan Jones to increase his pace. Those extra yards gave the opener less time to react and correspondingly adjust his shot, the falseness of which reveals how little the room for error is. Chahal’s grunt said it all, when his drag-down met the quasi-pull pioneered by Klaasen.

Sunrisers Hyderabad were 107/2 at the end of nine overs as Ricky Ponting walked out to the middle to lead the strategic timeout. As the supremo’s steps drew closer, Shashank, a repeat offender, hoped the earth would swallow him. His latest blemish, a sitter at backward square leg, was the 16th chance Punjab Kings had shelled this season, condemning the IPL 2025 runners-up to the bottom of the catching efficiency table. ‘’Poor old Shashank there,’’ Ponting sighed. ‘’I’m not going to be making excuses for anyone,’’ he added, responding to the query about whether the lower elevation and circular placement of lights as compared to traditional luminescent towers render visibility a challenge. ‘’It looked like Shashank had that one covered the whole way.’’

As Chahal looked up to the heavens, his eyes beseeching an answer as to why such rotten luck had befallen his existence, an epiphany struck the leg-spinner. His team was having a bad day at the office, and a personal push was the need of the hour to balance the scales. Cutting his follow through abruptly, he pursued a nudge towards mid-wicket to deny a double and even charged in from the deep to make another earnest, sliding attempt at preservation. He returned figures of 1/32, an output that belies the impact his chicanery had on Sunrisers Hyderabad.

His middle-overs squeeze was complemented by the second spells of Jansen and Arshdeep Singh, both relying on slower variations to stack up the dots and ultimately bring about the downfall of the 88-run partnership between Kishan and Klaasen. Walking in at 172/3, Nitish Reddy picked up length in a flash to clear cow corner twice, sharing 63 off 32 balls with the leading batter of the league. They tonked a maximum each to ransack 17 off Jansen’s last, leaving him with an economy of 15.20 that again ensured an undesirable entry into the club of bowlers leaking 60+ in an IPL innings. Although his quota was bookended by profligacy, he was among the few individuals bereft of soap in their palms in the derby that saw almost half-a-dozen drops.

Sunrisers Hyderabad had maintained a clean sheet defending totals in excess of 220, so the reduction to 23/3 did little to inspire trend-bucking faith in Punjab Kings’ camp. Pat Cummins’ set-up of Priyansh Arya was the crown jewel of that top-order annihilation, with the retrieval of third man and backpedalling of mid-on lulling the southpaw into the imagination of a full delivery.

Instead a bouncer above his right shoulder was Cummins’ bluff, inducing a miscue that was pouched smartly on the move by Eshan Malinga, a rare sight in a clash that will be remembered for its slippery sins. Every passing blemish wiped the smile off an ever-upbeat Chahal’s face. Tired, on his haunches, he refused to believe the visuals unfolding at Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium. How professional athletes were committing schoolboy errors, and how mediocrity in that department eventually unseated Punjab Kings from their top spot after an eternity.

Iyer reckoned that 235 was a bridge too far. ‘’We dropped many catches at the start and we could have easily delayed their score by 30 to 40 runs, I guess, because the wicket kept getting slower and the cutters were holding up a bit. So we weren’t comprehensive enough on the field and I think that was the biggest setback for us in today’s game,’’ the losing captain remarked. His analytical insight is on the money, for Connolly’s maiden T20 hundred meant Punjab Kings concluded 33 shy of the finishing post.

Referring to the skewed dimensions which are a godsend for miscues, Sunrisers Hyderabad head coach Daniel Vettori said, ‘’It’s a six-hitting ground and the way that Connolly played he put us under a lot of pressure.’’ His counterpart Ponting, meanwhile, pondered the what-ifs, unable to yank his disciples out of their clumsy era.

 

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