110 in 58 balls, 118 in 77 balls and 185 in 98 balls. Three matches, three century partnerships, 413 partnership runs, partnership average of 137.67 and a partnership strike rate of 177.25!

These are mind-boggling numbers hammered together by the SRH pair of David Warner and Jonny Bairstow in IPL 12 thus far.

The Australian-English pair added 185 in just 16.2 deliveries against RCB in Hyderabad on Sunday (31st March) – the highest first-wicket partnership in IPL history – as SRH rocketed to 231 for 2 in their allotted 20 overs to register the highest score in this season’s IPL.

It was also the highest score by SRH in the Indian Premier League – a total which buried the morale and confidence of RCB.

There have been five hundred-plus stands in the IPL this season – three of these involve the duo of Warner-Bairstow – that is how devastating they have been at the top for SRH.

The dominance of the partnership further highlighted by this statistic – of the 16 (full) overs they batted together they scored a boundary in at least 13 of them and scored more than 10 in 10 overs.

The pair blasted 15 fours and 10 sixes in the partnership – that is a total of 120 runs in the stand (64.86%) came in boundaries.

But it was not only about the power-hitting. The pair ran brilliantly between the wickets stealing singles and converting the ones into twos by putting pressure on the fielders – of the 98 deliveries they faced for the opening-wicket stand only 22 were dot balls – that is they did not score of only 22.45% of the deliveries they faced. 25.51% of the deliveries went for boundaries which meant they ran a single or two of as many as 52.04% of the deliveries they faced.

This has been a feature in all their three hundred partnerships. Against KKR, 50.65% of the balls they faced resulted in 1s, 2s and 3s, 19.48% in boundaries and 29.87% were dot balls. Against RR, these percentages were 45.61%, 29.82% and 24.56%.

This was only the second instance in IPL history (after Virat Kohli and AB de Villiers for RCB against Gujarat Lions at Bengaluru in 2016) when two batsmen have registered a hundred in the same team innings.

Warner-Bairstow have added 182 runs in 18 overs (powerplay overs) at a run-rate of 10.11 in the three matches SRH have played this season. It is the best strike rate in the powerplay amongst all teams thus far.

Bairstow went on to score 114 off just 56 deliveries including 12 fours and 7 sixes at a strike rate of 203.57 – his maiden IPL hundred.

Warner remained unbeaten on 100 off 55 deliveries (strike rate of 181.81). His exploits included 5 sixes and as many hits to the fence. This was Warner’s 4th IPL hundred. Overall, he is the fourth-highest run-getter and has the highest aggregate for an overseas batsman in IPL history.

Not surprising that Warner (254 runs in 3 innings at an average of 127 and strike rate of 175.17) and Bairstow (198 runs in 3 innings at an average of 66 and strike rate of 166.38) lead the run charts of this edition.

Only the duo of Kohli-AB have added more century partnerships – 5 – in a single season of the IPL (in 2016). With three in the first three, the Warner-Bairstow duo looks set to break this record.