Finch: 'Kishan made sure he assessed conditions, which is never easy in the powerplay'

Ishan Kishan had started IPL 2025 with a blazing hundred against Rajasthan Royals. But in his next seven innings, he could muster only 33 runs. While there were a couple of bizarre dismissals, there were some bad shots too.

On Friday night, though, Kishan showed signs of a return to form. With SRH chasing 155 against Chennai Super Kings, he came out in the first over itself after Abhishek Sharma fell for a duck. He took his time - he was on 21 off 20 at one point - before finishing with 44 off 34 balls. The target was still 65 runs away when he got out but his knock had paved the way for SRH's victory, only their third in nine games. On ESPNcricinfo Time Out, both Varun Aaron and Aaron Finch were pleased with how Kishan grafted his innings.

"He is one of those players who, if he gives himself time at the start, can take it really deep," Aaron said of Kishan. "And he did that today. If you see the way he went about his innings, he wasn't playing anything rash right at the start. He kind of assessed the wicket and then went from there.

"His team must be really pleased. He had a string of really bad scores. I think he scored more runs in this innings than in his last seven innings. He would have been really disappointed not to take it home as it wasn't like a really good delivery [he got out to]. There was a fielder right there [at deep midwicket] and he hit a straight down his throat."

Finch echoed Aaron's views. "His ability to read the situation and not overplay his hand early on and be overly aggressive [stood out]. He made sure he assessed the conditions, which is never easy because you want to maximise the powerplay. On the back of an early wicket, he assessed it and played nicely."

SRH took 18.4 overs to complete the chase, by which time they had lost five wickets. While it was not a dominating victory, Aaron felt there were plenty of positives to take home.

"Look, a win is a win," Aaron said. "Sunrisers, at the position they were in, they would take this win and especially when Abhishek hasn't got runs, [Tavis] Head hasn't got runs and [Heinrich] Klaasen hasn't got runs. Ishan Kishan coming good today... Still not his best innings, I would say. But again, Nitish Kumar Reddy guiding them home at least... So it's still a win. Yes, it was scratchy. It wasn't the easiest wicket to bat on but they have secured the win.

"SRH are not used to scrappy wins. They are used to absolutely steamrolling their opponents into submission and winning games. This is one of those games from which they would take some confidence out of and be like, you know what, we won that game, we can win games like that. We don't have to just go hard and win a game in ten or 11 overs."