Kolkata: Sometime last year, Praful Hinge had told himself he would take ‘four or five wickets’ whenever he gets to play his first IPL match. It happened exactly how Hinge had manifested. Sakib Hussain was given an entire night to prepare for his IPL debut. He didn’t put it to waste as well. It’s hardly fair to toss the ball to a debutant asking him to validate his price and skills with four overs, but Hinge and Hussain still did it, and how. None of it was by fluke though.
Hinge has played 10 Ranji Trophy matches for Vidarbha, but Monday’s game was only his second T20 appearance after the 2025-26 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, where he opened the bowling with Umesh Yadav and dismissed Andhra captain Ricky Bhui. He however has good training pedigree, having worked with Glenn McGrath and Varun Aaron at the MRF Pace Academy in the past. Hussain has been playing for Bihar with middling success till the latest season, where he took five wickets at 29.6 runs apiece. There were netbowling stints at CSK, and a season without a game at KKR. But Hussain kept working.
In a league where you perform or perish, Sunrisers opening their bowling with two Indian debutants could be viewed as a punt, but not to Aaron who was tracking them from the last year. “When I had seen them across different tournaments and in the nets, I always knew they had the x-factor,” said Aaron at the post-match press conference. “They have something different which can stand out especially in times like these where batsmen are just going hell for leather.”
The Sunrisers management still had to greenlight their buys, and that’s probably where it mattered the most. “Yes, I had seen these bowlers before, I did present their names to the management, to Dan (Daniel Vettori, the head coach) and to all the other coaches,” said Aaron. “But at the end of the day everybody’s buy-in is needed to pick boys at the auction, so I wouldn’t take the credit. I mean I think it’s to the team’s credit that we believed in these boys, we picked them.”
Every win matters. And the fact that this came on the back of an unorthodox, wholly local choice of bowlers who probably weren’t even analysed by rival data teams, is probably a bigger win for Sunrisers who are clearly trying to move beyond their announced strengths in a tournament where defending 200 plus scores is tricky. They are taking diverse routes to get there as well, given this was already the second time this season that Sunrisers have crossed 200 without their openers Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head clicking. Against RCB they were 49/3 after the powerplay, and on Monday they were 51/1; but they still ploughed on.
Ishan Kishan has proven himself to be the enforcer at No 3, but equally effective have been Heinrich Klaasen and Nitish Reddy who have paced their innings according to the situation to ensure the team total doesn’t suffer. Using Salil Arora—he had scored 125 off 45 balls for Punjab against Jharkhand in 2024-25—at No 6 is another example of Sunrisers trusting an uncapped player with a vital role. Still, 216 was chaseable, especially against a Sunrisers bowling unit waiting for Pat Cummins to return from injury. Which probably prompted them to throw their final dice in the form of two unknown fast bowlers.
“My only plea to both of them was that if I don’t see you enjoying the game, I’m going to be really angry with you,” said Aaron. “And they really did enjoy the game and we all enjoyed it as well.”
‘Enjoying’ the game translates to not freezing under the lights and forgetting the training. Hinge stuck to his, surprising Vaibhav Sooryavanshi—who till then had taken on even Jasprit Bumrah first ball—with a bouncer. “The best one was the first wicket of Sooryavanshi, because he was in form,” said Hinge at the post-match presentation. “I had already told a couple of people that I would get him out on the very first ball, either with a bouncer or in some way. I just wanted his wicket on the first ball.”
If Hinge taking three wickets in the first over was a start Sunrisers could have never have planned for, equally pleasing must have been the support act from Hussain. Not only did he exploit his skiddy action to put in more bounce than anticipated but Hussain also balanced his repertoire with slowers and cutters towards the end of the innings that nixed any possibility of a Royals comeback. How far they can go from here is a different question but as of now, it remains a stirring validation of what a franchise can achieve by moving beyond the usual names and harnessing the strength of their entire squad.
