David Warner showed that his duck against Rising Pune Supergiants was just a one-off blip in an otherwise red-hot streak. Like he had done during his 25-ball 58 against Royal Challengers Bangalore in their first face-off this season, Warner hammered the visitors’ attack to all parts of the ground during his 50-ball 92, his fifth half-century in seven matches. His knock led Sunrisers Hyderabad to the top half of the table with a 15-run win, after the sides had managed to play a full game despite rain delaying the start by an hour.

Warner used his force, timing and gigantic bat to hit boundaries regularly. He found an able partner in Kane Williamson who scored 50 off 38 in his first game of the season. Their second-wicket stand of 124 runs in 12.1 overs charged Sunrisers to 194 for 5, their highest total of the season. The Royal Challengers chase showed promising signs initially and the hosts helped them by dropping AB de Villiers twice, but Sunrisers’ quicks and the pressure of a rising asking rate were too much for the visitors.

Having lost his second successive toss, Warner changed gears after Shikhar Dhawan handed a return catch to Kane Richardson in the fourth over. Harshal Patel was introduced into the attack in the sixth over and Warner showcased his power-hitting, collecting 16 runs to launch Sunrisers’ run rate into an orbit from which Royal Challengers could not pull it back.

Williamson nudged the ball around in his slow start to give Warner most of the strike. The Royal Challengers spinners, Parvez Rasool and Tabraiz Shamsi, applied a speed breaker briefly by not conceding a boundary off 11 successive deliveries. Warner, however, went deep into the crease to tackle Rasool’s flat deliveries and Shamsi’s wrong’uns.

Once the quicks came back, Williamson took charge with a variety of fours in the 13th and 14th overs – a flick, an edge and a whip – which pushed the run rate close to 8.50. Warner targeted Richardson in the 15th with powerful and well-placed shots that lifted the scoring rate past 9. The Sunrisers captain holed out to long-off in the next over, and Williamson and Naman Ojha fell within four balls, but Moises Henriques’ 14-ball 31 with three sixes propelled Sunrisers close to 200.

Without Chris Gayle, who was not picked despite being available, Royal Challengers’ chase was dependent largely on Kohli and de Villiers. But it was KL Rahul who kick-started the innings, using sheer timing and placement to score flowing boundaries on the off side, even as Kohli was caught for 14 in Mustafizur Rahman’s first over.

Sunrisers could have derailed the chase further when de Villiers, on 3, skied a short ball to fine leg, where Ashish Nehra made a mess of an easy catch. Rahul continued to cream boundaries on the off side and brought up his fifty off 26 balls. Sunrisers, though, hit back when Moises Henriques produced a thin outside edge from Rahul’s bat and Mustafizur ran Watson out for 2.

In between those two dismissals, another de Villiers catch was put down: the batsman pinged the ball to extra cover but Deepak Hooda could not hold on. In the 14th over it looked like de Villiers was going to make Sunrisers pay. He clubbed two short balls from Henriques for mighty sixes, but the threat did not last long as he handed his third catch of the night off Barinder Sran’s bowling. Williamson, at long-on, leapt forward to get his fingers under it. At that stage, Royal Challengers needed 66 from 32, and with Mustafizur having two overs left to bowl, the task was too stiff.

Sachin Baby’s fearless strokeplay fetched him a 16-ball 27. Kedar Jadhav targeted the leg side for two sixes but their efforts weren’t enough to lift Royal Challengers, who are placed second from bottom in the points table.