It was a new venue and better luck for David Warner at the toss as he finally won the spin of the coin and immediately said Sunrisers Hyderabad would batting first against Chennai Super Kings in New Delhi.
This was the first time this IPL season that SRH were batting first, and having won just one match so far, it was crucial for them to put on a big total and make things difficult for Mahendra Singh Dhoni and his men.
But as luck would have it, SRH started slowly and lost opener Jonny Bairstow in the 2nd over itself.
With the big hitter gone, the onus was on Warner and Manish Pandey to rebuild the innings and propel the score.
In the powerplay overs, they scored only 39 runs.
But Pandey stuck in and found the singles and twos with ease while lacing his innings with the odd boundary.
While both batsmen got to their 50s and scored the odd boundary each over, SRH were just not finding the sixes. The scoreboard was ticking, but with no impetus in the middle overs, they perished as they went for the big.
It was eventually left to Kane Williamson to provide the final flourish as he and Kedar Jadhav hammered 33 runs off the final two overs to take the tally to 171 for 3.
All kudos to CSK's bowlers who kept the run-rate hovering at about 8 an over and kept Warner under pressure, not allowing him to go big.
Warner played a scrappy innings with none of his trademark big shots coming off his blade -- he was either not middling the deliveries well or when he was doing it, CSK fielders brought on their best show for the night, cutting the boundaries with sharp dives and throwing themselves at the ball inside the circle.
There was just no let-up. The boundaries flowed but at the backend there was not much scored. It was imperative for Pandey and Warner to go score quickly in the middle overs, something they didn't manage -- a score around 200 would have had CSK thinking.
