Chennai (Tamil Nadu) [India], May 19 (ANI): Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) assistant coach James Franklin praised Ishan Kishan’s 70-run knock against Chennai Super Kings (CSK) on Monday, describing it as the batter’s best innings of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 season so far.
With SRH chasing 181 in a crucial match, Ishan Kishan delivered a Player of the Match (PoTM) winning performance as he scored 70 runs off 47 balls, including three sixes and seven fours. While Kishan got dismissed in the penultimate over of SRH’s chase, he had already made sure that his team were only six runs away from a win and securing a berth in the playoffs, a job that new batter Smaran Ravichandran completed with ease. SRH defeated CSK by five wickets and with an over remaining.
Kishan has so far scored 493 runs in 13 innings in the current season, at an average of 37.69.
After the match, SRH assistant coach James Franklin praised Kishan for delivering what he felt was probably the batter’s best IPL 2026 innings so far, highlighting the maturity and composure he showed in adapting to a challenging surface. Franklin said Kishan assessed the conditions smartly, crafted his innings accordingly and batted deep to guide SRH close to victory.
“Ishan’s been brilliant for us this season. He’s obviously been terrific for India recently as well, and he sort of just carried that form into this IPL. I’d hazard a guess probably if you ask Ishan, so far in this year’s IPL, that was probably his best innings. Just for the situation of the game, the surface we are used to in the IPL playing on a lot of very flat surfaces that are conducive to power hitting, but today batters had to craft their innings in a different way. I thought Ishan’s innings today was just full of maturity, the way that he assesses what he needed to do and how he needed to do it and obviously batted as deep as he could through the 20 overs,” Franklin said in the post-match press conference.
SRH were 56/2 in 7.4 overs when Heinrich Klaasen (47 runs off 26 balls) joined hands with Kishan for a match-defining 75-run partnership.
Franklin also praised Klaasen’s partnership with Kishan, calling it brilliant, and said Klaasen has been outstanding throughout the IPL. Franklin added that Klaasen’s middle-order performances have been among the best in the season, highlighting his ability to read situations, maintain scoring momentum, and make a major impact on matches. Notably, Klaasen is currently the season’s top-scorer with 555 runs in 13 matches.
“The partnership with Klaasen was brilliant. Klaasen’s been immense for us right through this IPL. It’s one of the best middle order batting performances I think you’ll see through an IPL season what he’s producing at the moment. Reading the situation, batting at a tempo that keeps the scoreboard moving in a positive way and ultimately having a significant impact on games that were played,” Franklin said. (ANI)
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