Ravi Bishnoi, Mohammed Shami set up Punjab Kings' five-run win over SRH in dramatic finish
Sharjah, Sep 25: Young leg-spinner Ravi Bishnoi snared three wickets as Punjab Kings dished out a clinical bowling display to beat struggling Sunrisers Hyderabad by five runs in a low-scoring but entertaining Indian Premier League match here on Saturday.
The 21-year-old Bishnoi (3/24) ran through the SRH middle order after veteran India pacer Mohammed Shami rocked the run chase early on by dismissing both David Warner (2) and captain Kane Williamson (1) cheaply in the first and third overs respectively.
Chasing 126 for a win on a slow Sharjah Cricket Stadium track, SRH ended at 120 for 7 in 20 overs to end their hopes of making it to the play-offs.
Punjab, however, kept their hopes alive as they grabbed the fifth place with 8 points from 10 matches.
West Indian Jason Holder raised hopes of a dramatic win for SRH with a late onslaught of 47 off just 29 balls with the help of five sixes but in the end SRH were short by five runs.
SRH needed 21 from the final two overs and Arshdeep Singh conceded just four runs from the penultimate over. Needing 17 runs from the final over bowled by Nathan Ellis, Holder hit a six in the second ball but SRH needed a six to tie the score and take the match to Super Over.
But Holder, who had taken three wickets for 19 runs in the Punjab Kings innings, could score just one run from the final ball.
SRH were 20 for 2 after Power Play and Bishnoi took the centre stage from then onwards as he removed the next three batsmen to stifle the SRH run chase.
First, he had Manish Pandey (13) in the eighth over before dismissing Kedar Jadhav (12) and Abdul Samad (1).
From 43 for 3 at the halfway mark, SRH were 60 for 5 in the 13th over.
The arrival of Jason Holder at the crease gave some hopes to SRH as the West Indian hit two sixes to take 16 runs from the 16th over bowled by Nathan Ellis.
SRH needed 35 from the final four overs and Wriddhiman Shah (31) was set at the other end but he got run out in the 17th over in a horrible mix-up.
Earlier, Holder's impressive spell of three wickets for 19 runs helped SRH restrict Punjab Kings to 125 for 7 after being sent in to bat.
Punjab Kings batsmen struggled to get going on a slow wicket and failed to stitch any big partnership, the highest being the 30-run stand between Chris Gayle and Aiden Markram, who top-scored with a 32-ball 27, for the third wicket.
Captain KL Rahul had scored 49 in the previous match but got dismissed early this time as he fell to Holder's first ball for a run-a-ball 21 in the fifth over.
The other opener Mayank Agarwal (5), who had scored 67 against Rajasthan Royals on Tuesday, was out four balls later as he sliced a Holder delivery to Kane Williamson at mid off.
Punjab Kings were 29 for 2 after Power Play and could have been three wickets down the next over but David Warner dropped Markram off Khaleel Ahmed.
The Mohali-based side were 55 for 2 at halfway mark.
Chris Gayle shunned playing his trademark big-hitting shots but got dimissed for 14 off 17 balls off the bowling of Rashid Khan.
Nicholas Pooran (8) followed his senior West Indian colleague to the dressing room the next over, while Markram's promising innings ended in the 15th over while looking for big shots to accelerate the innings.
Deepak Hooda (13) hit some lusty blows before substitute fielder J Suchith plucked the ball out of thin air in an outstanding fielding effort to dismiss the batsman.
Punjab Kings took 14 runs from the final over bowled by Bhuvneshwar Kumar to end their innings at 125 for 7.
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3 US troops killed, 5 seriously wounded during Iran attacks, military says
Washington (AP): Three American service members have been killed and five others seriously wounded during the US attacks on Iran, the military said Sunday, marking the first American casualties in a major offensive that has sparked retaliation from the Islamic Republic.
US Central Command, which oversees the Middle East, announced the deaths in a post on X but did not say when and where they occurred. The statement said “several others sustained minor shrapnel injuries and concussions” and were going to return to duty.
Central Command described the situation “as fluid” and said it would withhold the identities of the service members who were killed for 24 hours after their families were notified.
The US military also denied Iranian claims that the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier was struck with ballistic missiles, saying on X that the “missiles launched didn't even come close.”
President Donald Trump had warned that American troops could be killed or injured in the operation.
“The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost, and we may have casualties,” the Republican president said in a video address released early Saturday. “That often happens in war. But we're doing this not for now. We're doing this for the future.”
Following the US-Israeli strikes that killed Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other leaders, Iran's counterattacks have struck US bases in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard has threatened to launch its “most intense offensive operation” ever targeting Israeli and American military installations.
Before the strikes, Trump had built up the largest US military presence in the Middle East in decades. The arrival of the Lincoln and three accompanying guided-missile destroyers at the end of January bolstered the number of warships in the region.
The world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and four accompanying destroyers later were dispatched from the Caribbean Sea to head to the Middle East.
The Ford was part of the US raid in Venezuela that captured leader Nicolás Maduro, who was brought to New York to face drug trafficking charges. The operation in January claimed no American lives but left seven US troops with gunshot wounds and shrapnel-related injuries.
One of those injured received the Medal of Honor during Trump's State of the Union address last week. Trump said Army Chief Warrant Officer 5 Eric Slover piloted the lead CH-47 Chinook helicopter that descended on the “heavily protected military fortress” where Maduro was staying.
Trump has launched several military operations during his second term, including strikes on members of the Islamic State group in Syria in retaliation for an ambush attack that killed two US troops and an American civilian interpreter in December.
The US military has also struck IS forces in Nigeria, after Trump accused the West African country's government of failing to rein in the targeting of Christians.
