SRH find a lifeline on sticky ground

Travis Head returned to Chepauk with some unfinished business. In last year's IPL final, he had been dismissed for a duck, chasing and edging an outswinger from Vaibhav Arora in what turned out to be an early omen for his team's defeat. Determined not to repeat the mistake, he came out swinging against Anshul Kamboj, who ran in again from over the wicket but with a slightly older ball. Only this time, it wasn't swing that accounted for the opening batter; it was seam movement from the rough, tired patches of Chepauk, which had done what they've been doing all season.

That it was a much more difficult wicket to bat on wasn't lost on Heinrich Klaasen either, who replaced Head at the crease, mistimed a drive first ball, and immediately watched a silly mid-off being placed exactly where the shot had landed. At that moment, a target of 156 felt huge. And it felt colossal when Klaasen holed out to long-on.

This was Chepauk, after all. Here, the ball grips, seams, spins, sometimes rears up and stays low. It's so tricky that it's left even the home team second-guessing. This season alone, the venue has had the lowest batting average (21.34), the slowest run rate (7.55), the fewest boundaries (15.40%) and the lowest frequency of sixes (19.3 balls/six) of any IPL venue. Both pace and spin have been equally hard to score off, averaging in the low 20s.

It was here that Sunrisers Hyderabad had lost all five of their previous matches to Chennai Super Kings. And sticky, two-paced conditions like these have been SRH's Kryptonite lately. In Mumbai earlier this season, when there was talk of 300 runs scored in an innings, Pat Cummins' side ran into a deliberate dry and slow pitch which left them searching for ideas. So When Mumbai Indians traveled to Hyderabad soon after, SRH tried flipping the script by rolling out their fastest surface, pitch No. 2, where they had earlier scored 286 and pulled off the second-highest chase in IPL history. But the plan backfired. The track, being used for the third time in a month, didn't get enough recovery time and MI simply got the better of SRH again, using methods they had employed on a sticky pitch only a few days ago.

That's what made Saturday's win at Chepauk feel like more than just two points. It was a win for SRH against their own patterns, a break from the helplessness that had crept into their campaign. This wasn't a chase built on dominance, but on adaptation, something both Cummins and head coach Daniel Vettori have been pleading for all season.

"No, we haven't [enjoyed slow sticky conditions like these]," SRH head coach Daniel Vettori admitted after the victory. "We've encountered them away and we've encountered them at home, so it hasn't quite matched up with our expectations around the surfaces. But the onus is on us to adapt and understand what's required."

It helped that Pat Cummins won the toss and chose to bowl first. It helped that their bowlers restricted CSK to a par total. But even then, as MS Dhoni pointed out, it was a "slightly better surface" to bat in the first innings and how, in the second innings, the ball held up more and spinners got more bounce. In that sense, the victory would have given SRH plenty of satisfaction.

What stood out was how SRH were able to come back from losing the PowerPlay to CSK, who were 50/3 at the six-over mark as opposed to SRH's 37/2, the difference being significant in a match of middling totals and small margins. In the past few games, a PowerPlay like this has tended to set SRH back beyond repair, but here, in Chennai on Friday (April 25), they found a way.

"It was two teams that were nervous about winning," Fleming looked back with a chuckle, "going hammer and tongs on a tough wicket. It was tough to watch!"

Used to winning more perfect games of cricket built on dominant top-order partnerships, coming out on top in this mud-wrestle of a match would have pleased SRH. They finally managed to stitch partnerships together, didn't go too hard subtracting the pitch out of the equation, and respected the conditions. Ishan Kishan's 44 off 34 balls was a masterclass in manoeuvring tricky conditions. It wasn't an innings you would remember for its shots two days later, but one that was exactly what the situation demanded.

The pivot for a better batting approach also came through reshuffling the order, with Kamindu Mendis walking ahead of Nitish Reddy. The Sri Lankan scored an unbeaten 32 off 22 balls, relying on quick singles and deft sweeps through the course of his 49-run unbeaten partnership for the sixth wicket with Reddy, who was handed finishing duties on the night.

"That's why the likes of Kamindu came into the team," Vettori explained. "That's why there was the shuffle in the batting order, putting Klaasen up, Nitish down, to give us a more balanced approach to a chase in particular.

"The initial plan was around left-right-hand combinations, and that's in a way to counter Noor [Ahmad] and Jaddu [Ravindra Jadeja] and how good they are through those middle stages," Vettori further said. "A lot of the logic was picking him for this ground. We knew what sort of surface we'd come up against and to have a batsman who can play all types of spin, be aggressive, and hit a multitude of shots, that was the starting point."

Not to forget Kamindu's expert use of angles with the ball - bowling left-arm orthodox to right-handers and switching to right-arm offspin in the same over against left-handers, including Shivam Dube - which helped SRH keep a lid on the scoring rate. And then there was the catch to top it all off: a two-handed, full-stretch grab at long-off that proved to be the difference.

On a night where every small moment mattered, Mendis' all-round contributions embodied the spirit SRH needed. He was gritty and flexible and unafraid to adjust.

It wasn't the kind of win that will light up the season's highlight reel. It was scrappy, tactical and slow-burning, and at times a "tough" match to watch in Fleming's words, but it truly felt like a night where SRH rewrote their story with a shift in approach. They walked into Chepauk carrying scars from slow pitches and a season slipping away. They walked out with a win that reminded them that they could in fact tame conditions and that they still have a say in how their season ends.