Kishan and his aggression against RCB impresses Moody with his unbeaten 94 instrumental in Sunrisers’ victory.
Kishan and his aggression, coupled with his continued braveness to take the game on’ impresses Moody.
In the second IPL 2025 match, Ishan Kishan scored 106 runs off of 47 balls. He recently got 94 not out in 48 balls against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in his 12th innings. After subtracting those 200 runs, you have 125 in ten innings. Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) wasn’t as dominant as they were the previous season for a number of reasons, including Kishan’s lack of runs during the IPL’s prime. “That certainly impacted the SRH performance,” according to Anil Kumble.
Of course, Kishan wasn’t alone. Travis Head was unable to duplicate his 2024 heroics. Heinrich Klaasen had irregularities. Abhishek Sharma did not falter. However, Kishan, who joined the top few for SRH this season, demonstrated in those two innings what SRH could have achieved.
“I think that if your opening partnership, which was so effective last year, between Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma – Abhishek has played well this season but Head hasn’t been able to do it – then your No. 3 has a huge responsibility,” Kumble said on ESPNcricinfo’s Time Out. “His start to the season was great, but after that he was not in form. That certainly impacted the SRH performance.
“Not to forget that Klaasen couldn’t do what was expected of him either. Nitish [Kumar] Reddy too. Aniket [Verma] played well, but if your main batters are not in form, maybe when you don’t qualify for the playoffs you think about all these things.”
Kishan’s miserable run in April was the main cause of his disappointment. Most recently, he has taken 34 and 28 balls to score 44 and 35, respectively. Much less than what he can do. Until Friday, when he regained his mojo. “Ishan Kishan played a very mature innings; he certainly held the innings together for us,” Simon Helmot, the assistant coach for SRH, stated during the post-match news conference.
“He was under a lot of pressure going into this game,” Tom Moody said of Kishan. “He would have felt the fact that he has had a poor season even though he started very well. We were talking about that and you can guarantee [that] around the franchise, they were probably talking about it: do we keep him, do we retain him, what do we do, how do we go about it…
“I think he’s made it very clear today that he is being retained, if there was any doubt. The composure stood out to me. And just his continued braveness to take the game on. Obviously helped because it was happening at the other end as well.”