"Glad I could shut up those Indian fans"- Harry Brook reacts after a brilliant century vs KKR

The 19th game of the ongoing 16th edition of the Indian Premier League featured the first century of the season. It was SRH's costliest player, Harry Brook, who faced a lot of criticism and went on to become the first centurion of the IPL 2023.

Sunrisers Hyderabad took on the two-time champion Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens. After winning the toss, Nitish Rana chose to bat first. Brook came out to open the inning with Mayank Agarwal. Although SRH lost Agarwal (9) and Rahul Tripathi (9) early, Brook carried on his onslaught.

He and skipper Aiden Markram added 72 runs for the third wicket. Markram scored 50 off 26, with two fours and five sixes. Then, Brook added another 72 runs for the fourth wicket with Abhishek Sharma (32 off 17). The English star also kept on scoring boundaries at regular intervals.

In the end, he completed his maiden IPL century in the 20th over and ended at 100 not out from 55 balls, with 12 fours and three sixes. He helped SRH post the highest total in this IPL of 228/4 in the first inning. Notably, prior to this inning, Brook had registered 13, 3, and 13 in three innings.

SRH spent a whopping INR 13.25 crore and was expecting him to fire. But he failed poorly in the first inning, which drew criticism from many fans. After his century, Brook opened up and said that he went to bat on Friday without thinking too much and gave a befitting reply to the trolls.

Brook said, "I think I was putting pressure on myself after the first few games. If you go on social media, people are calling you rubbish and you start to slightly doubt yourself a little bit. But I just went out there with a 'I don't care' mentality tonight and thankfully came up. There are a lot of Indian fans out there (on social media) who are going to say 'well done tonight' but they were slagging me off a few days ago. Glad I could shut them up."

Chasing the target, KKR finished at 205/7 and lost the game by 23 runs. Skipper Nitish Rana made 75 off 41, and Rinku Singh remained unbeaten on 58 off 31. Marco Jansen and Mayank Markande took two wickets each.