Kishan's 'continued braveness to take the game on' impresses Moody

Ishan Kishan scored 106 not out off 47 balls in the second match of IPL 2025. In the latest, his 12th innings, he scored 94 not out in 48 balls against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). Take out those 200 runs, and you're left with 125 in ten innings. One of the many reasons Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) weren't the force they were last season was Kishan's lack of runs through the best part of the IPL - "that certainly impacted the SRH performance," as Anil Kumble said.

Kishan wasn't the only one, of course. Travis Head couldn't replicate his heroics from 2024. Heinrich Klaasen was patchy. Abhishek Sharma held his own. But Kishan, the new face in the top few for SRH this year, showed in those two innings what could have been for SRH.

"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."

It was the poor run through April that really spoilt it for Kishan. Most recently, while he has scored 44 and 35, those have taken him 34 and 28 balls respectively. Well below what he is capable of. Till he found his mojo again on Friday. "Ishan Kishan played a very mature innings; he certainly held the innings together for us," SRH assistant coach Simon Helmot said at the press conference after the game.

"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."

In what has been a disappointing season for SRH with one match to go, their last two games is cause for optimism. Before scoring 231 for 6 in the win over RCB on Friday, they had scored 206 for 4 in 18.2 overs to overhaul Lucknow Super Giants' total.

"The last two matches, our batting performance has been very solid, we've achieved large scores, match-winning scores," Helmot said. "Obviously, our batters assessed the wicket [on Friday] and we felt it was a very nice wicket to bat on and a large score was going to be required. So, we maintained that aggressive approach but it was still important to have a batter in at the very end to ensure that we could capitalise on those last few overs. So, I think as a batting unit, we maintained the course.

"I think we'll always be aggressive and always be positive but we'll always try to be smart as well and understand that not all surfaces play the same way. And so, a score of 170 or 180 might be a match-winning score [in some places]. So, we've never sought to try and make over 200 every innings but if we believe that the surface is good enough and our batters can get some partnerships together, then you can get those match-winning scores."