Match Analysis

Talking Points - The Ishan Kishan run-out, explained

ESPNcricinfo runs an analytical eye over the key moments of the match between Sunrisers Hyderabad and Mumbai Indians

The Ishan Kishan run-out: explained
In the 13th over of Mumbai Indians' innings, Ishan Kishan set off for a non-existent single after pushing Rashid Khan into the off side, and seemed to have no chance of escaping being run out when Vijay Shankar, scrambling to his left from backward point, picked up the ball and flicked it towards the keeper's end. Jonny Bairstow, however, seemed to give Kishan a lease of life when he accidentally bumped into the stumps while trying to get around them and collect the throw near the popping crease. Both bails fell off at that point, and Kishan threw himself towards the crease.
Bairstow collected the ball and disturbed the wicket once more even as Kishan's dive took him past the crease. Which happened earlier, and how exactly was the third umpire to adjudicate, given both bails had already fallen off?
If the bails have come off the wicket, the fielder still has the option of uprooting a stump, "providing that the ball is held in the hand or hands so used, or in the hand of the arm so used," according to Law 29.1, which concerns when exactly the wicket is "put down".
While collecting the ball and dragging his arm back to disturb the wicket, Bairstow ensured he did so with enough force to pull one of the stumps entirely out of the ground. At the point when this happened, Kishan was still a few inches short of making his crease, leaving the third umpire a fairly straightforward decision to make.
Did Mumbai adapt to Hyderabad's big boundaries?
The Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium is one of the larger grounds in the IPL, and six-hitting, as a result, is a trickier prospect here than at most other grounds. Since the start of the 2017 season, a six has been hit once every 22.12 balls here, as against once every 17.35 across the other IPL grounds. Of the eight major IPL venues, Hyderabad has been the second-most difficult ground to hit sixes in, behind the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur, where the balls-per-sixes ratio is 27.81.
Teams that come to Jaipur or Hyderabad (or Mohali, another unusually large ground), therefore, have to change their game a little. Did Mumbai manage to adapt? On the face of it, no. Both their openers, Rohit Sharma and Quinton de Kock, fell to catches on the boundary, off shots that weren't perfectly middled but might have cleared the rope elsewhere. Hardik Pandya also found deep midwicket with a flat slog-sweep. The ball came to Vijay Shankar at a comfortable catching height here, but at one of the smaller grounds he may have had to complete one of those difficult leaping catches on the edge of the boundary.
Kieron Pollard hit four sixes in his unbeaten 46 off 26 balls, but one of those sixes was a catching chance that Mohammad Nabi, running to his right from deep square leg, parried over the boundary.
Bairstow vs legspin, chapter five
Piyush Chawla, Shreyas Gopal, Yuzvendra Chahal, Sandeep Lamichhane, and now Rahul Chahar. In every innings he's played in so far this season, Jonny Bairstow has been out to a legspinner. Mumbai must have known of this trend when they brought on their legspinner in the fourth over of Sunrisers' chase, and Bairstow promptly fell to the first ball he faced from Chahar.
Bairstow vs legspin hasn't been a one-sided struggle, though. Aside from the dismissals, he's not fared too badly this season, scoring 93 off 51 balls against that style of bowling, at a strike rate of 182.35.
Even his dismissal today was a little unfortunate. Bairstow picked the googly out of Chahar's hand, and went for the slog-sweep, but the ball didn't turn. Instead, it went on straight with extra bounce, like a topspinner, and the outside edge ballooned to short third man.
Sunrisers' perennial middle-order issues continue
"Top-heavy" is a tag that's followed Sunrisers Hyderabad around pretty much since the team's inception, and little has changed this season. Warner and Bairstow are by far IPL 2019's most productive opening pair, and until today that had masked the frailties that remain in the middle order.
Today, however, neither opener got to 20, and when both were dismissed in the space of four balls, Sunrisers were 33 for 2, needing 104 off 91 balls. Fairly gettable, you'd think, even on a slightly tricky surface.
But no one from Nos. 3 to 7 really got going, and between them they eventually only made 52 off 73 balls. The two middle-order batsmen who spent most time at the crease were Manish Pandey (16 off 21) and Deepak Hooda (20 off 21), and neither was able to get going, and between them they only managed to find the boundary once.
The form of those two batsmen is a huge concern for Sunrisers at the moment. Pandey has faced 43 balls so far this season, and Hooda 35. Neither has hit a six yet. The next-worst batsman on that list is Royal Challengers Bangalore's Prayas Ray Barman, who has faced 24 balls so far without hitting a six.

Karthik Krishnaswamy is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo