Heinrich Klaasen's measured 71 and Abhinav Manohar's 43 rescued a listless Sunrisers Hyderabad from a terrible start and guided them to 143/8 against Mumbai Indians in their Indian Premier League match here on Wednesday.

SRH suffered an embarrassing batting collapse to slip to 35/5 in the first half before Klaasen took charge to avoid a complete disintegration.

Klaasen struck nine fours and two sixes for his 44-ball 71, putting on 99 for the sixth wicket with impact substitute Abhinav Manohar, who played a steady second fiddle with his 37-ball 43 (2x4s, 3x6s).

But it was a harrowing start for SRH who are placed second-last on the points table and face an uphill battle to keep themselves alive.

The lack of confidence was evident when SRH's top-order crumbled without any apparent pressure on a dry, hard and flat deck.

Instead of putting pressure on the MI bowlers, SRH presented a meek batting show, which was compounded by a reckless decision from Ishan Kishan (1) who walked back despite not having edged one behind the stumps.

Deepak Chahar's (2/12) ball drifted down the leg side, which the on-field umpire duly called a wide. But seeing Kishan walking back, he raised his finger.

Interestingly, neither the bowler nor MI wicketkeeper Ryan Rickelton appealed for a caught behind.

The collapse began when Travis Head (0) threw his bat at a wide delivery on the off side from Trent Boult (4/26) to give catching practice to Naman Dhir at third man.

Abhishek Sharma (8), who hit a six to begin with, gave another simple grab to Vignesh Puthur off Boult, while Nitish Kumar Reddy played one straight to Mitchell Santner at mid-on for Chahar's second wicket.

The top order implosion saw last year's finalists crawling to an embarrassing 24 for four in the powerplay in a contest which is nothing less than a must-win for SRH.

Aniket Verma and Klaasen steadied the ship for a little while but SRH's misery continued when the former was bounced out by MI skipper Hardik Pandya, with the hosts slipping to 35 for five inside nine overs.

Klaasen struck two fours and a six off Puthur in the 10th over and hit three more boundaries off Pandya in the next to give SRH some momentum, but MI bowlers kept a tight control in general to not let the burly South African get away.

Klaasen did not get much assistance from the other end as Manohar, sent as an impact substitute, crawled to one off seven balls before his first big hit.

Klaasen's resistance ended in the penultimate over when Jasprit Bumrah (1/39) had him caught by Tilak Varma for his 300th T20 wicket, while Manohar fell to Boult in the last.

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