IPL 9 Player of the Week: Mustafizur Rahman

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NEW DELHI: The past week of matches in IPL 9 has thrown up several superlative efforts, with Andre Russell turning in two Man-of-the-Match performances for Kolkata Knight Riders, Shikhar Dhawan hitting form with a pair of highly effective innings for a resurgent Sunrisers Hyderabad and Virat Kohli hitting his second hundred of the season. But for his leading role in pushing SRH up from the bottom half of the IPL points table to second spot, it is Bangladesh’s left-arm cutter Mustafizur Rahman who gets our vote for Player of the Week.

Sunrisers’ batting – chiefly that of skipper David Warner – had carried the franchise in the first half of the tournament. But coming off a six-day gap, SRH needed to get into winning ways in a hurry to gain lost ground on teams like KKR, Gujarat Lions and Delhi Daredevils, who played three games this past week.

First up, they hosted table-toppers Gujarat Lions on Friday. Bhuvneshwar Kumar struck the early blows by getting Dwayne Smith and Suresh Raina inside five overs – he went on to earn the Man-of-the-Match award for this – but Mustafizur left his impression on this five-wicket win. In his first over, the last of the Powerplay, he had the in-form Dinesh Karthik out for a duck, producing a leading edge which was exceptionally taken by Kane Williamson at backward point. Just two runs came from Mustafizur’s opening over.

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