Mohammed Shami tore into Sunrisers Hyderabad with a masterful new-ball burst and Rishabh Pant finished the job with a nerveless half-century as Lucknow Super Giants clinched a tense five-wicket win in their IPL clash on Sunday, sealing the chase off the penultimate delivery.
Delivering a spell dripping with control and guile, Shami sent down 18 dot balls and ended with figures of 2 for 9 from his four overs, a performance that formed the backbone of the effort to hold Sunrisers Hyderabad to 156 for 9, in the IPL 2026 match no. 10.
LSG then hunted down the target as Aiden Markram struck 45 off 27 balls and captain Rishabh Pant anchored the innings with a 50-ball 68 not out, guiding his side home with one ball in hand.
The equation tightened late
with 9 required from the final over, but Pant took charge, cracking Jaydev Unadkat for two consecutive fours — the second a forehand, tennis-style slap — before lifting another boundary over mid-off to close out the contest in emphatic fashion.
Pant’s knock contained nine fours, and he carefully selected his shots on a sluggish surface where SRH spinners Harsh Dubey and Shvang Kumar extracted assistance and frequently beat the bat.
Yet the platform had been laid much earlier by Shami, the 35-year-old craftsman, who effectively decided the contest in the Powerplay with the ball. He removed the dangerous opening duo of Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head off consecutive deliveries spread across two overs, each dismissal coming via a different variation of a slower ball.
Young Prince Yadav (2/34 in 4 overs) offered strong support, and his late-moving outswinger (which shaped in as an inswinger to Ishan Kishan) was arguably the standout delivery of the innings.
At 26 for 4, Pant might have sensed a chance to bowl SRH out for under 100, but Heinrich Klaasen (62 off 41 balls) and all-rounder Nitish Kumar Reddy (56 off 33 balls) launched a fierce counter-attack, stitching together 116 runs for the fifth wicket.
However, the innings unravelled again near the end as SRH suffered a second collapse, losing five wickets for just 14 runs in the final 2.2 overs.
LSG’s reply was not without hiccups, as the chase stalled in pockets, but Pant, reining in his natural aggression, balanced flashes of his audacious best with a clear focus on ensuring his team crossed the line.
Repeatedly left out of national plans, the 35-year-old Shami delivered a pointed message to the selection committee through an opening spell of rare quality that throttled Sunrisers Hyderabad despite the resistance offered by the Klaasen-Reddy partnership.
Reading the surface quickly, Shami recognised that taking pace off would be crucial and adjusted immediately, relying on variations rather than sheer speed to unsettle the batters.
Against Head, he fired in four full, near-blockhole balls and conceded only a single, before turning to Abhishek with the final delivery of the first over — a loopy, fuller ball on the fifth-stump line that the opener tried to hit on the up.
Instead of a traditional slip, a ‘fly slip’ or short third-man inside the circle was in place, and Manimaran Siddharth flung himself forward to complete a sharp diving catch.
First ball of Shami’s next over, he rolled his fingers over a length delivery that gripped and bounced a bit extra, forcing Head to check his drive, and the mistimed, aerial push was snapped up by Aiden Markram, who dived forward at mid-off.
Having sent down enough dot balls to effectively account for three maiden overs, Shami was then substituted as an Impact Sub after the 10th over, his job with the new ball done.
It was around this stage that SRH managed to claw their way back into the contest.
With the scoreboard reading a grim 35 for 4 after 10 overs, Klaasen and Reddy opted to counterpunch, adopting an “offense is the best defense” mindset and going hard at anything in their zone.
Once the back 10 overs began, the momentum shifted dramatically, as overs 11 to 15 yielded a stunning 79 runs. Leg-spinner Digvesh Rathi, miserly in his first two overs for just 10 runs, was then taken apart for 36 in his next two.
Sixes and fours began to rain down with almost monotonous regularity as the pair powered their way to a record fifth-wicket stand of 116 runs in only 10.3 overs.
But the surge ended abruptly when both set batters fell in quick succession, allowing LSG to reassert control and keep the home side under 160, a cap on the total that ultimately made the decisive difference.
