Travis Head has continued to look in good form as the T20 World approaches, and Pat Cummins won a batting award, but the duo's efforts have been insufficient to carry Sunrisers Hyderabad to victory over Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League.
Head cracked a swift 30-ball 48, and Cummins was honoured for the highest-strike in the match with an unbeaten 35 from 17 balls. Cummins then followed up with a wicket maiden as Sunrisers tried to protect their total of 8-173 and plant one foot into the playoffs.
But Mumbai recovered from 3-31 to win by seven wickets with 16 balls to spare thanks to a stunning innings from Suryakumar Yadav.
Known as SKY he hit an unbeaten 102 from 51 balls, clinching victory and bringing up his century with a six. That kept Indians in with a chance of the playoffs though at eight points they remain four adrift of the qualifying quartet, among which are Sunrisers with 12 points.
Head was bowled off a no ball on 24 and dropped at third man on 44, but failed to punish the latter error as he was soon caught at deep backward square leg off Piyush Chawla.
With Chawla and Hardik Pandya taking three wickets a apiece and Jasprit Bumrah parsimonious as usual Sunrisers slipped to 8-138. However, with Cummins hitting out the last 21 balls went for 37 runs to give the visitors a potentially defendable total.
Loose bowling gave Indians a flier, with 26 runs off the opening nine balls, but there were six runs off the next 19 balls as wickets fell, including Cummins dismissing Rohit Sharma for a fourth time in his wicket maiden.
In the sixth over, however, Cummins went for 16 including a six by SKY. The batter took Marco Jansen for two sixes and two fours in the following over and Indians were up and running. After that the only issue was weather SKY's fatigue would get the better off him.
But like Glenn Maxwell at the World Cup, he hobbled on, smacking Cummins 4-4-6 to end the 17th over as Indians finished at a sprint.
