Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) didn’t look like a team that had won five games in a row, it was suggested to Ambati Rayudu after Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) bowled SRH out for 165 to romp to a seven-wicket win in their IPL 2026 game on Sunday.

Rayudu disagreed: “They actually looked like a team after five wins because they have been complacent.”

“Proper complacency,” Rayudu continued on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut, “because they thought they can get away with no planning or anything would work for them. Once you get on a roll, you feel like everything is going to work. And against a team that is struggling in the tournament, you fancy your chances. And I somehow don’t think they got their planning right.

“In an afternoon game in Hyderabad, you know that the ball generally stops and comes. It’s not an easy wicket to bat on [SRH chose to bat]. Later on, it becomes better. They should have known that because most of these guys have been playing there for a couple of years or more. I think it’s bad planning to start off with.”

SRH are still at No. 3. With Punjab Kings (PBKS) losing later in the day to Gujarat Titans (GT), SRH could have moved to the top with a win. They fluffed their lines big time. Their head coach, Daniel Vettori, put it down to losing wickets at key moments in the game, chiefly to Varun Chakravarthy (3 for 36) and Sunil Narine (2 for 31), but also to Kartik Tyagi (2 for 30). None of the six KKR bowlers who bowled came back without at least a wicket.

“I think we had got off to a great start [71 for 1 in the powerplay] and couldn’t capitalise on that,” Vettori said. “Lost some wickets at crucial times and when you’re left with 160 [165], it’s incredibly difficult to defend even if the wicket was a little bit slow. I think we had enough fight in there after the powerplay [KKR had an identical 71 for 1] to give us a small chance but they managed to chase really well.

“We just lost those wickets at crucial times and I think in a T20 game, even if you have momentum and the opposition can stifle it, then it’s hard to regain it. And the wickets of Travis [Head, in the ninth over], Ishan [Kishan, in the 16th] and [Heinrich] Klaassen [in the 11th] were probably just at crucial times. If any of those hadn’t happened, we would have been able to continue on.”

Katey Martin, also speaking on TimeOut, wasn’t as harsh on SRH as Rayudu, but did say the team lacked “thought” with their batting, especially on a day when two of their high-worth top four – Abhishek Sharma (15) and Klaasen (11) – failed. They got 103 runs in 57 balls from Head (61 in 28) and Kishan (42 in 29), but no one else got into double-digits till captain Pat Cummins scored 10 from No. 8.

“I think sometimes you have those days and, look, they have had such a reliance on the top-three batters as well. We talk so much about GT, but they are very close as well,” Martin said. “[They needed] just a little bit more thought in the way that they needed to approach [the innings]. Maybe that just comes on when you’ve been going so well. You sort of just get on the conveyor belt and things just sort of tend to happen as they need to.

“For Sunrisers, I think maybe sometimes you just need that type of performance to reset and go again in terms of that momentum.”