Sharjah: Kings XI Punjab’s explosive batsman Glenn Maxwell continued his blazing form with another whirlwind innings of 95 to blow away Sunrisers Hyderabad in the Pepsi Indian Premier League’s ninth match at the Sharjah Cricket Stadium on Tuesday.
The unstoppable Maxwell, who has turned out to be a nightmare for all bowlers, cracked 95 off just 43 balls (nine sixes and five fours) to steer his team to a whopping 193 for six.
A demoralised Hyderabad could only muster 121 runs in 19.2 overs and crashed to a 72-run defeat to gift Punjab their third successive victory.
Chasing the total, Hyderabad got off to a horrendous start. Skipper Shikhar Dhawan failed again, edging Mitchell Johnson to be caught behind for one. Laxmipathy Balaji angled his delivery to bowl Aaron Finch for 19, the first of his four wickets which came off only 13 runs.
Balaji also took the prize wicket of David Warner, forcing him to play into the hands of Maxwell at point. When Sandeep Sharma too clean bowled Venugopala Rao for 11 and Akshar Patel too bowled Irfan Pathan for 5, Punjab took full control over the match.
With scoreboard reading 74 for five in 11 overs, Hyderabad’s sole hope rested on Darren Sammy who also fell for just 15 runs.
Shower of sixes
Maxwell had hit 95 against Chennai Super Kings in the first match in Abu and then 89 against Rajasthan Royals, making it a habit to make bowlers look like performing a wasteful job against him.
Maxwell, who has been hitting sixes with ease has so far piled up 17 sixes from the three matches. In fact, Hyderabad Skipper Shikhar Dhawan and Coach Tom Moody had announced before the match that they had devised a plan to stop Maxwell. In front of his aggressive batting nothing seemed to have worked as he thrashed sixes at will.
Luck too favoured Maxwell when at his score on 10 David Warner at long off dropped an easy catch off leg break googly bowler Karn Sharma.
He steered Punjab past the 100-run mark with a slog sweep over deep mid wicket in the 13th over. He hit Mishra for four sixes in that over. David Miller, who is also an aggressive batsmen made sure that Maxwell gets the maximum strike.
