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SRH have a great plan A. Now they need a plan C

Chasing has been a bit of a problem for the trendsetters with the bat this IPL season

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There are 120 legal balls in a T20 innings and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) have attacked more than half of them not once, not twice but three times this season. That led to two record-breaking totals (69 aggressive responses vs Royal Challengers Bengaluru and 63 vs Mumbai Indians ) and one where they looked on course for 300 (67 vs Delhi Capitals).

This is what's made them such a dangerous side this IPL season, especially in good conditions. They have stretched the realms of possibility by doing one very simple thing - allowing both ends to go bang, bang. Not for them, the idea of one batter being content with just rotating the strike when the other guy is making perfectly clear just how much is in their favour out there. In Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Delhi, the pitches were less mud and clay and more red carpet.

The same template worked for the one win that they had while chasing. Abhishek Sharma finished that game in Hyderabad in virtually a single over of play when he kind of forgot there were 18 more left. Mukesh Chaudhary was hit for 4, 0, 6, 0, 7nb, 6, 4 and that was that. Left-hand batter took down left-arm bowler angling it into his hitting arc. This is what SRH want.

"It's not just random slogging," the captain Pat Cummins said at the press conference on Sunday after they lost to Chennai Super Kings (CSK) by 78 runs. "Like our guys still pick their bowlers. It's something that we talk about - picking match-ups that suit you and if it's a green light, then you know, go for it. If it's not your match-up, then be a little bit smarter about it. I've been really happy how the boys have been going about it. Even tonight, I don't think there were too many reckless shots."

That night, which was their first meeting with CSK a little over three weeks ago, SRH had gotten so far ahead that even when spin came on and throttled the run-scoring to the point that there were 6.1 overs without a boundary, the required rate they were looking at was still a run-a-ball. This is the reason why Cummins believes they are actually set up to be a chasing team.

So why then does their run-rate drop from 11.74 batting first all the way down to 8.76 batting second? Why do their sixes - the very reason behind their revival - slump from 76 to 36? And why did they lose this game, getting bowled out for 134 when they've been able to put up totals of twice as many, twice?

Because they keep attempting to kill chases, instead of trying to last through them, and it's resulted in needless wickets. Against RCB, they lost four in the powerplay. Against CSK, they lost three. That's a lot of resources being burnt in too short a time leaving them with too big an ask. Each of SRH's failures batting second have involved them having to get to targets of 200-plus. And the only time they actually looked like they might was when Heinrich Klaasen did Heinrich Klaasen things.

Even in that match, against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), they were 133 for 4 after 16 overs facing a required rate of 19. They will want to do better at building their innings, or re-building them rather. Because it is easy to look at every ball as a six-hitting opportunity when you have support down the order. But when you're running out of partners, you can't just go bang bang. You need other skills.

Lucknow Super Giants had those. They too stumbled in the powerplay against CSK but recalibrated. In the end, it didn't matter that they had to stomach a period of play where they could score only three boundaries in five overs. By ensuring that they had a set batter out there, they were able to capitalise when CSK had to turn to a couple of their weaker bowlers.

Dew played a big role in ensuring that outcome, which was probably why, against SRH, at every opportunity, eight members of the Chepauk groundstaff broke onto the field, dragging four ropes between them. Two for the off side and two for the leg side. One trip up. Another trip down. It must have helped. CSK's spinners couldn't even bowl in that LSG defeat. Here, Ravindra Jadeja was able to get through his four overs and was hit to the boundary only once. It was another example of how one team had all bases covered. The other came in with great plan A but little else.

Aiden Markram did try though. He gave up looking at the asking rate that kept shooting up. His focus, instead, was in making sure he could be out there in the last few overs. At 63 for 3 in the eighth over, he was 25 off 17 with a strike rate of 147. He was a snowball just beginning to roll downhill. Except all of a sudden, Matheesha Pathirana popped up and made his middle stump go splat. And the Chepauk DJ dropped the needle on a glorious track from way back in 2006 which contains a chorus that goes enga area, ulla varathe, ooooh, oooh!, which loosely translated means "this is our territory, don't you come in."

This pitch was a fresh one and it had juice. When Tushar Deshpande bent his back, he was hitting the splice of the bat. He also seemed to be working to a plan to exploit the ground's considerable dimensions. SRH's mammoth totals came at venues with relatively tiny boundaries. Here, Abhishek and Travis Head were asked to target the long ones square of the wicket and they perished.

Michael Hussey, the CSK batting coach, laid it all out when talking about his own team and how they deal with falling behind like that. "I know some of the scores have been really big around the country. 260-plus. 275 in some places. But not all conditions are like this. I mean, we've got a pretty big ground here in Chennai. The boundaries are very big. The pitch sometimes can be a little slow, it can take some spin. Okay, the dew can help skid it on sometimes, but we try and assess the conditions as quickly as we can.

"If we've lost wickets up front, sometimes you do need to take a little bit of time to stabilise before then launching again. In other conditions, maybe like in Kolkata or maybe in Delhi, because if the conditions suit the batsmen, you can just keep going, especially if it's a small ground, flat batting pitch, lots of bating resources, then you can have the confidence to keep swinging and you'd have more chances of scoring runs. But here at Chepauk, we need to adapt to the conditions, understand the conditions and play accordingly."

The game might perhaps have turned out entirely differently if the SRH openers' attempts to clear the boundary had actually succeeded - which is what they'd be telling themselves right now - but that once again is a best-case scenario. This outstanding batting line-up needs to show that it has the nuance to cope even when things aren't going their way.