Skipper Ishan Kishan’s 91 and a combined spell of 8/58 from Praful Hinge and Sakib Hussain helped SRH claim first home win of IPL 2026.
Skipper Ishan Kishan took it into his own hands with an inspiring 44-ball 91 to counter the high-flying Rajasthan Royals and the bowling attack, which looked unrecognisable with new names like Praful Hinge and Sakib Hussain humbling the power-packed Royals batting lineup.
Dream debuts
The crowd erupted the loudest this evening after Vaibhav Sooryavanshi’s wicket today at Uppal as the teenage sensation got out for a golden duck by an unknown SRH debutant, Praful Hinge.
It was a dream spell for the 24-year-old Praful from Nagpur. The ball obeyed the wishes of the tall, fast bowler who got it to swing sharply both to the right-handers and the left-handers. Dhruv Jurel, who came into this game after making 81 not out in the last match, was left surprised with the movement Hinge generated when the ball pitched and swung sharply inwards. Jurel tried to play with the angle bat, but ended up losing his stumps. By this time, the youngsters’ confidence and exuberance rubbed off on the entire team on the SRH field.
Vaibhav Sooryavanshi ✅
Praful Hinge ✅
Lhuan-dre Pretorius ✅A dream start for Praful Hinge on his #TATAIPL debut 🧡
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— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) April 13, 2026
The magical start did not end there. Dashing South African Lhuan-dre Pretorius, another debutant of the evening, did not have the opportunity to show his batting dexterity as his crisp flick found Nitish Kumar Reddy at deep square leg and to put the cherry on top, Praful scalped the Rajasthan skipper Riyan Parag, who drove a ball which was swinging away to take the outside edge to the slip. While Praful hogged all the limelight, another SRH newcomer, Sakib Hussain, removed Yashasvi Jaiswal to leave RR’s innings in tatters at 9/5 inside the powerplay.
Another debutant making his mark ✅
🎥 Glimpses of Sakib Hussain’s 4/24 in his first outing in #TATAIPL 🔥
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— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) April 13, 2026
Sakib later came back for his third over when Donovon Ferrira was flexing his power-hitting muscles and planning an unlikely comeback of sorts with Ravindra Jadeja. Sakib rounded off with two more wickets, showing different versions of his slower ball to Jofra Archer and Ravi Bishnoi.
Ishan’s counterpunch
Hard lengths have been the modern solution for bowlers to counter batters in the T20 format. It worked with Abhishek Sharma when seeing him down the track, Jofra Archer pulled his length back as Sharma’s cut off the very first ball of the match went straight to the third-man fielder Ravi Bishnoi, and it kept Travis Head quiet for the majority of his painful run-a-ball 18 runs innings.
But here is the catch: hard length might be a problem for most batters, not for Ishan Kishan, whose bread-and-butter shot is blasting those hard-length balls into the square-leg region with the incredible power generated through forearms. And Rajasthan walked right into the trap against Kishan. Archer and Nandre Burger became predictable with their lengths, so much so that Ishan just started to set up for the shorter ball, transferring his weight onto the back foot, and the plan worked for the first couple of overs, but became counter-productive for the rest of the evening.
Although Ishan scored two boundaries by then, he announced his arrival with his slashing cut through the point region off Burger, and then in the following over, Sandeep Sharma floated one up to Kishan as a surprise delivery, but the SRH skipper was onto it and hammered it back at the bowler. It showed Kishan was switched on and seeing the ball well. The tone for the evening was set from here, and it turned out to be Kishan’s masterclass against hard-length deliveries.
Unstoppable 🔥@SunRisers Captain Ishan Kishan is putting on a show and HOW 🧡
Updates ▶️ https://t.co/xGTDdKbXpY#TATAIPL | #KhelBindaas | #SRHvRR pic.twitter.com/0wOceq9d8n
— IndianPremierLeague (@IPL) April 13, 2026
The 27-year-old took a measured approach when he was batting with Head, building a partnership of 55 runs from 40 balls; however, once he went past his half-century, the detonator of the dynamite came off, and Tushar Deshpande in the 11th over was the first to take the impact of it. Kishan scored 21 runs in this over, and then came Archer’s turn. He was not spared by Kishan either, as he smacked him for three boundaries in a row to pile on further misery in the 13th over. By this time, the tide had completely changed. Ironically enough, Ishan eventually perished to Sandeep Sharma’s delivery, dug into the pitch, but mistimed the pull and was caught by the bowler himself. The damage, however, by then had been done.
Brief Scores: SRH 216/6 in 20 overs (Kishan 91, Klassen 40) beat RR 159 all out in 19 overs (Ferreira 69; Hussain 4/24, Hinge 4/34) by 57 runs.
