In the IPL 2026 opener, Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) were outclassed in all departments by defending champions Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium.
SRH scored over 200, largely due to the individual brilliance of stand-in captain Ishan Kishan, Heinrich Klaasen and Aniket Verma. Apart from these three, the rest of the team players disappointed SRH head coach and New Zealand cricket legend Daniel Vettori.
After the match, SRH shared a back-room video from its official social media account. The video captured the post-match speech of the head coach, who extensively criticized the bowlers for the defeat against RCB. RCB, chasing the target of 202 runs, won the match with 6 wickets and 26 balls remaining.
SRH bowlers attacked RCB batsmen, but they had to suffer loss.
Against the back-of-the-length and fast seam deliveries of Jacob Duffy, RCB’s top order collapsed early. Duffy, who made his IPL debut for RCB last night, bowled four consecutive overs to dismiss Abhishek Sharma, Travis Head and Nitish Kumar Reddy in quick succession.
Unlike the back-of-the-length balls from the Kiwi pacer, the SRH bowlers went for fuller and uncontrolled pace variations. As the balls were in the arch of the Bengaluru batsmen, Devdutt Padikkal, Virat Kohli and Rajat Patidar did not hesitate to hit the balls hard.
After the match, in the dressing room, Daniel Vettori, himself the star bowler of the New Zealand national cricket team, explained why the opposition side scored so easily against them.
Daniel Vettori expressed disappointment with his bowling unit
“I think the challenge for us is to understand what we did poorly with the ball. And I think the message in the game was, ‘Can we find the length? Can we overcome our strengths with just the slower ball, slower ball bounce?’ And I think we were far from that today,” the head coach explained.
“I think 10 full balls went for six. And when you do that, it puts you against the game. So I don’t want to make it about the bowlers not doing their job. I just want to use it as a challenge for the next game. So we understand the poor performance. We understand we didn’t play our best, but it starts now.”
Some positive comments for SRH before KKR match
Amidst the disappointing result and weak bowling performance, the team will enter the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on March 2 with some positives.
Vettori spoke on motivating the team, “I think the batting performance to get to a very good score off that power play shows the quality of the top seven and the way you guys came together in the first game, even in some challenging situations, was really impressive and Ishan (Ishan Kishan) and Klaasie (Henrik Klaasen) managed us through that little bit, Annie (Aniket Verma) got us into the score, it was very impressive from the three of you.”
We learn as a unit. We bounce back as a unit. motiv pic.twitter.com/7flkwdlebR
– Sunrisers Hyderabad (@SunRisers) 29 March 2026
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