Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) head coach Daniel Vettori lamented his team's poor bowling performance in their IPL 2026 opener against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in Bengaluru on Saturday.
Sunrisers Hyderabad posted a total of 201/9 after being asked to bat, but they failed to defend that total as RCB scripted a comfortable six-wicket win. Virat Kohli (69*) and Devdutt Padikkal (61) scored half-centuries as RCB chased down the total in 15.4 overs.
The two of them forged 101 runs from 45 balls for the second wicket. "I think we understand where the game's gone and how destructive that RCB batting line-up is," Daniel Vettori said after the match.
Daniel Vettori on SRH's poor bowling performance
"You have to get a good start, which we did against [Phil] Salt, but then I just think we weren't at our best with the ball, we weren't as disciplined as we needed to be, and we gave a lot of scoring opportunities to Virat and Padikkal, who played exceptionally well.
"I thought the way his [Padikkal's] intent, when he came out, put us right back under pressure, where we should have been able to maintain a little bit more after getting that important wicket of Salt. So it was a very good batting performance by RCB and one of our poorer bowling performances," he added.
The former champions are currently missing Australia pacer Pat Cummins, who is their regular skipper.
Cummins is currently recovering from a back injury that forced him to miss the 2026 T20 World Cup, where Australia crashed out in the group stage. Ishan Kishan is leading Sunrisers Hyderabad in the absence of Cummins.
‘We learnt a lot from how RCB bowled’: Daniel Vettori
"I think we learned a lot from how RCB bowled and what was effective and what wasn't, and obviously we discussed that, but we just weren't able to implement that. You don't want to have a rusty performance because of how important every game is in the IPL, particularly how to start," he said.
"But today was one of our challenging bowling displays. We saw at the back end when we started to go back to our usual disciplines that we could actually be effective and take some wickets, but I think we just missed our lengths too much. Duffy, in particular, showed the length to bowl on that surface," he added.
For SRH, Jaydev Unadkat registered figures of 1/29, whereas impact player David Payne registered figures of 2/35. Harsh Dubey claimed figures of 1/35.
Sunrisers Hyderabad will look to clinch their first win of the season when they face Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Thursday (2 April).
