Hyderabad, Apr 25, 2023, IANS

Hyderabad, April 25 (IANS): Sunrisers Hyderabad coach Brian Lara has taken his batters to task for their failure to chase a target of 145 against Delhi Capitals. There was no devil in the pitch and they should have achieved the target, Lara said after the match.

In one of the worst possible chases of a target, Sunrisers Hyderabad failed to achieve a target of 145 against Delhi Capitals in Match 34 of India Premier League (IPL) 2023 at the Rajiv Gandhi International here on Monday.

Though SRH bowlers had performed brilliantly to reduce Delhi Capitals to 62/5 before allowing them to reach 144/9, thanks to a run-a-ball 34 by Axar Patel and a 27-ball 34 by Manish Pandey.

Still, the target was achievable as the pitch was not offering much to the bowlers. But the SRH batters failed to maintain a good scoring rate, had a poor Power-play and despite a 39-ball 49 by opener Mayank Agarwal and some late-order heroics by Heinrich Klaasen (31 off 19) and Washington Sundar (24 not out off 15) fell short by seven runs.

"What went wrong? I think I think it's obvious to see that, you know, chasing a total of like 145, I didn't think there were any sort of devils in the pitch. You know, I felt that we could have been a little bit more proactive throughout the innings and we just sort of left everything too late," Lara said in the post-match press conference.

"I'd prefer if my batters are a little bit more enterprising and I think, you know, when you do get a Power-play you need to take advantage of the Power-play and the middle overs," the West Indies batting legend said.

The SRH batters were stifled by the Delhi Capitals spinners, Azar Patel and Kuldeep Yadav, both of whom gave 20-odd runs each in their spells.

Lara said the spin attack was expected and his batters should have countered that.

"We know teams at that stage of the match are going to throw spin at you and look to sort of take wickets and cramp you and I think we allowed that to happen and obviously the equation got a little tough.

"We felt that maybe the fast bowlers are coming back. We could still get 12,13 runs in an over, But these guys are professionals as well. You got (Anrich) Nortje, you got Ishant Sharma, Mukesh and they put the balls in the right areas," he added.

Lara said they did not lose it in the middle orders, but rather in the first 15 overs. "I wouldn't say the middle overs, I think the first sort of 15 overs is where we should have been in a much better position than we were in at that stage in the end," he added.

Asked whether he felt let down by his batters, Lara replied in the negative. "As a coach, I'm never sort of let down. Whatever situation that presents itself, we got to work through it. You know, my players are not going out there to fail. Their number one priority is to get the team across the line.

"I am disappointed in how the game turned out, you know, for us and doing how critical it was and how well the bowlers did to get the Delhi Capitals down to that total, we should have won that game. That's all I can say. But moving on, we've got seven games left and everyone should know what the equation is. So we've got to regroup quickly.," he added.