Tuesday night at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad did not go the way Pat Cummins and Sunrisers Hyderabad had planned. GT bundled SRH out for just 86 runs, handing the Sunrisers a thumping 82-run defeat, and the scoreline alone shows how quickly the innings fell apart. Rather than making excuses, Cummins went to the post-match presentation and gave credit where it was due.
Pat Cummins stays composed after SRH batting collapse against GT
"I feel they bowled really well in that second innings," he said, adding that he felt fairly confident when SRH finished their turn in the field, but he admitted the pitch played very differently once Gujarat started their attack. That kind of honest take matters, especially coming from a captain whose team just posted their lowest-ever total in the IPL.
GT's bowlers earned every bit of that credit
Kagiso Rabada (3/28) and Jason Holder (3/20) took six wickets between them, while Prasidh Krishna (2/23) and Mohammed Siraj (1/11) kept the pressure on throughout the chase. Cummins watched this from the middle and was genuinely impressed. He said Gujarat’s bowlers consistently hit a back-of-length and gave SRH's batters almost nothing to work with. "They made the most of it," he said, and it was hard to argue with him.
Travis Head went for a duck, Abhishek Sharma managed just six runs, and the main batters down the order failed to get going on a pitch that gave a lot of help to the fast bowlers. By the time it was over, only four SRH batters had even reached double figures. Cummins himself ended up as the team's top scorer with a hard-fought 19 off nine balls, which shows just how much the top order struggled.
What SRH missed with the ball first?
One of the more honest parts of Cummins' post-match talk was about SRH's own bowling earlier in the evening. He admitted the team probably should have stuck to hitting those hard lengths for longer while GT was batting. "You learn from that," he said, noting that once the pitch started helping the short-of-length balls, GT’s bowlers grabbed the opportunity and didn’t let go, while SRH may have wandered off their marks.
Defending what looked like a modest 168, GT broke through the SRH chase with their pacers constantly attacking the right spots on a deck that offered plenty of bounce. The difference in how the two sides used the conditions told the whole story, and Cummins didn't sugarcoat it.
Why does he still back his batters fully?
Despite the mess of being bowled out for 86, Cummins refused to panic. He looked at the bigger picture of the season and reminded everyone that SRH's batting group has been great throughout the tournament. "All four of our top four have over 400 runs," he said, treating the collapse as a one-off bad day rather than a long-term problem.
"This happens in T20 cricket," he added, and he’s right. Even the best batting lineups in the world have days where they collapse on tough pitches. The key, as Cummins sees it, is not letting one bad night ruin a season that has otherwise gone quite well for the Men in Orange.
SRH still have enough to fight for a playoff spot
Cummins pointed out that SRH had won five or six of their last seven games before this loss, which gives them some breathing room in the race for the playoffs with two games left. The defeat hurt, especially the hit to their net run rate, but SRH are still very much in the hunt.
GT, meanwhile, moved to the top of the table with 16 points and are closing in on a playoff spot after this big win. For SRH, the focus moves quickly back to what worked for them in those earlier wins. They need to move past this result fast, which is exactly the mindset Cummins is pushing.
The Pat Cummins SRH batting collapse IPL 2026 story will be a tough one to swallow for a few days, but if the captain has his way, the team will start the next game with a fresh slate and a batting unit that still believes in itself.
