Sunrisers Hyderabad openers Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma did not take any time to get going after Delhi Capitals captain Rishabh Pant won the toss and opted to field.

Khaleel Ahmed bowled the first over. Head swung and missed the first ball, but hit the second ball for six, and put the next two balls away for fours. Abhishek joined in, hitting the last ball of the over to the fence.

At the other end, Head began with two sixes off Lalit Yadav. When Anrich Nortje replaced Khaleel, Head picked up four boundaries in the first five balls before smashing the last over the deep square-leg fence for six to reach his half century. At 16 balls, this was the joint-fastest fifty of IPL 2024, at par with Abhishek’s.

Until this point, Abhishek had faced only two balls and had put both of them away for fours. Now, as Lalit switched ends, he hit two sixes, and Head got a third. In the next over, Abhishek lofted Kuldeep for three sixes. After five overs, Hyderabad were 103-0, two short of Kolkata Knight Riders’ powerplay record.

It took them another ball to go past KKR’s 105. Head hit Mukesh Kumar for four consecutive boundaries, and rounded off the over with a six. After six overs, Hyderabad’s score stood at 125-0 with Head on 84 from 26 balls and Abhishek on 40 from 10. Between them, they had 24 boundary hits in 36 balls – Head 11 fours and six sixes, Abhishek two fours and five sixes.

This is also the record powerplay score in the history of all T20 cricket by a substantial margin. The previous record was 126-0, set by Nottinghamshire openers Riki Wessels (41 in 34 balls) and Alex Hales (95 in 30) against Durham at Trent Bridge in 2017.

However, Sunrisers did not go on to score the kind of 300+ innings total they had the potential to at the end of the powerplay. Four wickets fell in 17 balls from the second ball of the seventh over, with Abhishek, Head, Aiden Markram and Heinrich Klaasen all back in the hutch. Nitish Kumar Reddy chipped in with 37 in a 67-run partnership with Shahbaz Ahmed – who went on to make a maiden IPL half century. Sunrisers finished on 266-7, the fourth-highest team total in IPL history.