Captain Kane Williamson led from the front with a solid fifty as Sunrisers Hyderabad shrugged off initial wobble to beat Kolkata Knight Riders by five wickets in their IPL match.
Williamson struck exactly fifty off 44 deliveries, hitting four boundaries and a six to help Sunrisers chase down the small target of 139 after the visiting side were reduced to 55 for 3 in the ninth over at the Eden Gardens.
Opener Wriddhiman Saha and Shakib Al Hasan made useful contributions of 24 and 27 respectively. Williamson's 59-run stand with Shakib -- who also took two wickets in KKR innings -- for the fourth wicket eased the pressure on the Sunrisers as they reached 139 for 5 in 19 overs to notch up their third win on the trot.
The match briefly threatened to take a twist when Williamson was out in the 18th over and Sunrisers needing 20 from 2.4 overs but Yusuf Pathan (17 not out off 7 balls) had other ideas as he hit a four and a six in the 19th over bowled by Andre Russell to finish off the match with one over to spare.
The Sunrisers made a bright start to their chase with openers Shikahr Dhawan and Saha scoring 32 in three overs before both departed in quick succession.
Saha hit three fours in third over bowled by Mitchell Johnson to get 16 runs from that over. With Dhawan also, getting the boundaries with ease, it looked like for a while that the Sunrisers would chase down the target in quick time.
But the match turned on its head after the first wicket fell in the form of Saha in the fourth over. Sunil Narine delivered as soon as he was introduced in the fourth over as he induced Saha to poke at an away going delivery into the hands of Shubman Gill at point.
Dhawan, who was in fine touch in the last two matches, was out cheaply this time for seven as he became Narine's second victim in the sixth over, clean-bowled by the West Indian off-spinner and suddenly Sunrisers were in trouble at 46 for 2.
Manish Pandey did not last long as he was trapped LBW by Yuzvendra Chahal for four in the ninth over. Run rate drastically dropped as the Sunrisers reached to 62 for 3 at halfway mark, needing 77 from the remaining 10 overs.
But the visiting side had their men in captain Willaimson and Shakib to do the job in the middle and they steadied the innings with a 59-run association to set up the win for their side.
Earlier, a splendid bowling show spearheaded by pacer Bhuvneshwar Kumar, coupled with a brilliant fielding display, helped Sunrisers restrict KKR to a modest 138/8 in a rain-interrupted first innings.
Returning to action after a one-match injury lay-off, Bhuvneshwar once again shone at the death, claiming 3/26 as KKR's rejigged batting order looked in a complete disarray.
Opting to bowl after winning the toss, SRH's overseas duo of Billy Stanlake (2/21) and Shakib Al Hasan (2/22) put the brakes in the middle overs, triggering a collapse after a one-hour rain delay.
An integral part of KKR's twin-IPL winning campaigns, Shakib became the thorn against his former team and young Australian pacer Stanlake gave him a fine support.
The left-arm spinner from Bangladesh took the two key wickets of Chris Lynn (49 off 34 balls; 7x4, 1x6) and Sunil Narine (9) to play a big role in restricting KKR to a small total.
Lynn was the lone KKR crusader in the middle but a sensational diving catch by Shakib off his own bowling denied the Australian a half-century as the star Bangladeshi cricketer once again did his job in the middle overs.
Bhuvenshwar gave the first breakthrough by dismissing Robin Uthappa (3) in the third over after a successful use of DRS.
KKR showed defensive strategy early on to hold back their in-form opener Narine, a move that did not help much as their batting order did not seem convincing with U-19 World Cup winner Shivam Mavi coming in at No. 7.
Bhuvneshwar's breakthrough and a tidy two-run over by Stanlake had KKR struggling for 23/1 in four overs before Lynn and Rana seized the momentum in two overs off Siddharth Kaul and Rashid Khan who leaked 14 and 12 overs respectively in their first overs.
KKR were looking good with Lynn and Rana in the middle before rain stopped the play at the score of 52/1 in seven overs.
But SRH did well to bounce back, riding on a splendid catch by Manish Pandey.
Rana hit Stanlake firmly just wide of Pandey, who showed amazing reaction to grab it on the second attempt and give SRH the breakthrough in four balls after play resumed.
The wicket straight after the rain break was a bonus and SRH did not look back after that.
Them performing liveNajmuddin Saifuddin Qawwal Group
Despite his growing profile, he has not previously worked on video game voice acting projectsYouTube/ IO Interactive
The cast of Marriage Material in key moments from the play, including Avita Jay, Kiran Landa, Omar Malik, Irfan Shamji and Anoushka Deshmukh
Sathnam Sanghera’s 'Marriage Material' adapted into bold new play on conformity
The play Marriage Material at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre is Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s adaptation of Sathnam Sanghera’s novel of the same name, which first came out in 2013.
She is lucky to have Iqbal Khan direct Marriage Material. The play, a co-production with the Birmingham Rep, is set in the late 1960s. Mr and Mrs Bains (played by Jaz Singh Deol and Avita Jay) run a corner shop in Wolverhampton. Their younger daughter, Surinder (Anoushka Deshmukh), is 16, her sister Kamaljit (Kiran Landa) is just a bit older.
They have a neighbour, Patwant Dhanda (Irfan Shamji), who, as we shall soon see, is not a very pleasant man. In fact, he comes across just as racist as Enoch Powell, who represented Wolverhampton South West for the Tories from 1950 to 1974.
It will be recalled this was a time when Sikhs working on the buses were told they couldn’t wear a turban. That was a hard-fought battle that had to be won.
The Bains, meanwhile, simply want to get their girls married off.
Nothing new here, I thought.
What makes the tale different is that the plot twists and turns down the generations. Mr Dhanda, who has the makings of a paedophile, makes a pitch for one of the girls when Mr Bains dies early in the play. “A life with no man in the house is no life,” he informs the newly widowed Mrs Bains.
Mr Dhanda has a wife but she has returned to India so he considers himself to be a free man.
Surinder’s English teacher from school, Miss Flanagan (Celeste Dodwell), who is also head of the fifth form, tells Mrs Bains about her daughter: “I don’t want to embarrass you, but she is bright. Ridiculously bright.”
She adds: “Mrs Bains, I think it would be a pity if Surinder didn’t stay on at school.” The initial response from Mrs Bains is not encouraging: “Too much education makes people’s brains get mixed up, they don’t sleep at night…”
But she is finally persuaded that Surinder should be allowed to stay on for a while longer before being married off.
Mr Bains was very old school. When Surinder confides she would one day like to be “a somebody”, he is amused that “my daughter wants to be a somebody”.
“Like you,” she tells her father.
Mr Bains consoles his daughter: “We will find a somebody for you to marry.”
At the point of a possible marriage, however, Surinder is sweet-talked by chocolate salesman Jim Wilson (Tommy Belshaw) into running away with him. They share a love of literature, and he calls her “Sue Bains”. But the relationship does not end well.
Once she has left, Surinder is written off as “dead” by her family. The story that is circulated is that she was only 16 when she was killed in a car crash. That’s better than to let on that she ran off with a white man.
By the time she is reconciled with her sister towards the end of the play, a great deal has changed. Kamaljit married Tanvir Banga (Omar Malik), a young man who helped out in the Bains’ corner shop. When the two sisters meet again, Tanvir has also died. But he and Kamaljit had a son, Arjan Banga (Jaz Singh Deol doubles up for this role after the death of Mr Bains). He has come home after his father’s death to help his mother who is still running the family corner shop.
Meanwhile, Mr Dhanda’s business has prospered. He now has a son, Ranjit Dhanda (the role is taken by Omar Malik after Tanvir’s death), and he is nearly as unpleasant as his father.
Arjan has an English fiancée, Claire (Celeste Dodwell). In London, Arjan worked as a creative director. But after deciding to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, he decides he cannot marry Claire because she is white. In other words, Asians are not free of racism, either. Happily, at the end, the couple are reconciled.
As for Surinder, she parted company with Jim Wilson after realising he was all talk, depended on her for money and had failed to earn a penny from his literary pretensions. She had prospered, though, as a hotel owner and had been transformed in time into a well-groomed businesswoman. After being tracked down by Arjan, she decides to return to her roots in Wolverhampton and help Kamaljit run the family corner shop. Perhaps 50 years had passed during the passage of the play.
Being subjected to racism turned some Asians into racists themselves. The word goreh (white person) is repeatedly spat out with venom. Maybe it is worth remembering the play’s audience isn’t exclusively Asian – white folk are watching as well. And maybe some of the toilet humour ridiculing white people, which always makes me cringe, could be cut out.
In Sanghera’s novel, there is a quote from Enoch Powell’s speech in November 1968: “The West Indian or Asian does not, by being born in England, become an Englishman. In law he becomes a United Kingdom citizen by birth; in fact, he is a west Indian or an Asian still... he will by the very nature of things have lost one country without gaining another, lost one nationality without acquiring a new one. Time is running out against us and them. With the lapse of a generation or so we shall at last have succeeded – to the benefit of nobody – in reproducing ‘in England’s green and pleasant land’ the haunting tragedy of the US.”
In Marriage Material, where the acting is marvellous (apart from Mr Dhanda’s Indian mannerisms and accent being overdone) we do travel across a couple of generations.
There is a scene when Tanvir rejects Mr Dhanda’s vision of creating a little Punjab in Wolverhampton.
Mr Dhanda wants to take over the Bains’ corner shop and is putting pressure on Tanvir to sign the papers. He says: “In this country, money is the path to freedom.”
“Sign, please,” he instructs Tanvir. “We must make sure our children learn to behave nicely, according to our rules.”
He insists: “We maintain our identity so we can be ourselves.”
Tanvir disagrees: “We can be us here. With the goreh.”
Dhanda warns him: “Then we will be inviting chaos.”
Tanvir’s comment is telling: “You sound like Enoch.”
Kamaljit, who is expecting a baby with her husband Tanvir, says: “I would like my child to grow up knowing the history of the Gurus and to read the Granth Sahib. And to love their culture.”
Tanvir tells his wife: “I would like my child to go to the finest schools, to cheer for England in the World Cup and eat Yorkshire pudding on a Sunday.”
Kamaljit sets out a dream that has perhaps come to pass with many third and fourth generation British Asians: “Maybe our child can do both.” Much, much later, in a throwback to the past, we learn of Surinder’s O-level results: “Biology A, Chemistry A, English Language A, English Literature A, French A, History B, Latin A, Mathematics A, Physics A…”
Kamaljit tells her younger sister: “Never mind about the B.”
And that is quintessentially Asian. Their acting is outstanding.
Marriage Material is at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre until June 21, and at the Birmingham Rep from June 25-July 5