By Prakash Nair 
Hyderabad, April 5: Nine runs. Six balls. One wicket left. That was the situation Lucknow Super Giants found themselves in at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium on Sunday evening. And the one man still standing at the crease, doing what he does in these moments, was Rishabh Pant.
He hit three boundaries in five balls. Match over. LSG won by 5 wickets with just 1 ball to spare.
Simple to say. Anything but simple to watch.
Shami Walked Into His Old Home and Wrecked the Place
Before any of that drama with Pant, there was Mohammed Shami with the new ball. And let us be clear about something: what Shami did in the first six overs on Sunday was the kind of bowling that reminds you why he was once the most feared fast bowler in the country.
He was playing at Hyderabad. This was once his ground, his home, his franchise. SRH let him go. They must have been wondering why on earth they did that by the time the powerplay ended.
Abhishek Sharma walked in and fell for a duck off the very first over, caught at short third. Then came Travis Head, arguably SRH’s most dangerous batter. Gone too, lobbing it to mid-off, beaten by a scrambled seam delivery bowled at just 121 kmph. That’s the thing about Shami. He doesn’t have to be quick. He just has to be smart. And at 33, he is smarter than ever.
Ishan Kishan fell soon after, caught behind off young Prince Yadav, and Liam Livingstone was sent packing too, stumped brilliantly by Pant off a Digvesh Rathi delivery. Four wickets gone. The crowd at Uppal had gone completely silent.
In the powerplay, SRH managed just 22 runs. That’s 22 runs in 6 overs. At a venue where teams routinely score 50-plus in the first six. It felt like watching a car stall on the highway while everyone around it zoomed past.
When Shami finished his four overs, his figures read: 2 wickets for just 9 runs. His second-best bowling figures ever in the IPL.
Two Men Refused to Let SRH Die
At 35 runs for 4 wickets, most teams would have simply surrendered. Not Heinrich Klaasen. Not Nitish Kumar Reddy.
These two walked to the crease and just started batting. Properly batting. Not nudging, not surviving. Hitting boundaries, picking gaps, taking on the short ball. The partnership grew. Then grew some more.
By the time both were dismissed, they had added 116 runs together for the fifth wicket. Klaasen scored 62 off 41 balls. Nitish made 56 off 33. It was a rescue act that nobody in the stadium expected.
That stand was the reason this match was even a contest. Without it, SRH would have been bowled out for under 80 and the game would have been over by the 14th over of the chase. Instead, the total climbed. The crowd woke back up. The pressure shifted.
Still, once both fell in quick succession toward the end, no SRH lower-order batter could reach double figures. They finished on 156 for 9, with a run-out off the final ball sealing their innings.
157 to win. Eighteen overs of daylight left. Should have been a stroll for LSG.
It was not.
LSG Made a Meal of a Simple Chase
Ask any cricket fan and they’ll tell you. Chasing 157 on a flat Hyderabad pitch with 20 overs to bat is about as comfortable as it gets in T20 cricket. LSG found a way to make it feel like climbing a mountain.
Mitchell Marsh went early, dismissed for 14. Aiden Markram gave them a brisk start and raced to 37 before he too was gone. Then wickets started falling at awkward intervals. The required run rate kept creeping up. What should have been a comfortable 8-run-per-over chase suddenly started feeling tight.
Pant was there throughout. But for long stretches, he was playing carefully. Measured. Calculating. Not the usual Pant. He wasn’t smashing it from ball one. He was building. Reading the game. Rotating the strike. Taking singles when the field was set back.
Some called it slow. Some called it frustrating. By the end of the night, everyone called it brilliant.
When LSG needed 9 off the last over, Pant did what he always does. He hit three boundaries in the first five balls and finished the chase before the last ball was even bowled. He walked off unbeaten on 68 off 50 balls, the first fifty of his IPL 2026 campaign. He didn’t raise his bat much. He just turned around and walked back. A man on a job, job done.
What This Win Means for LSG
Going into Sunday, Lucknow Super Giants had lost two games on the trot. They had looked shaky against the Delhi Capitals in their opener. Their middle order had questions around it. There were whispers about Pant’s captaincy decisions, about their batting depth, about whether this team had enough.
One win doesn’t answer all of that. But it puts two points on the board and gives the dressing room something they badly needed: belief.
LSG head coach Justin Langer was happy with how the bowlers stuck to their plans, particularly in the powerplay where the ball swung and the fielders held their catches brilliantly.
For SRH, this loss will sting a little. Their top order has now collapsed twice in three games. Yes, they have Klaasen and Nitish to bail them out and those two were magnificent on Sunday. But you cannot keep sending your top four back to the dressing room inside the powerplay and expect to win games consistently.
Star pacer Pat Cummins is still unavailable and is expected to rejoin the squad only around April 17. His absence hurts their bowling options. And with the next few games coming up quickly, SRH need their top three to fire before he gets back.
The Real Story: Shami’s Return to Hyderabad
Look past the match result for a second. The real headline of this game is an older man with a new team walking back into his old home and dismantling it.
Mohammed Shami is 33. He has been through injuries, criticism, a messy public personal life, and periods where people wondered if we had seen the last of the real Shami. Sunday at Hyderabad was his answer to all of that.
2 for 9 in four overs. Against the team that once owned him. On their own ground. In front of their own fans.
Cricket has a funny way of writing these stories. And Shami, for one Sunday evening at least, got to write a very good one.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
