R49m man Heinrich Klaasen happy to give back to Sunrisers after 37-ball record IPL century

Heinrich Klaasen’s Proteas future may be in the balance but the middle-order batter once again rubberstamped his superstar status in the white-ball game.

Klaasen, who has not accepted a Proteas contract from Cricket SA, closed the IPL season in belligerent style for Sunrisers Hyderabad.

The 33-year-old smashed nine sixes and seven fours in his 105 not out off just 39 balls - in the process striking the third fastest IPL century of all time - against the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Long regarded as one of the most destructive players of spin, Klaasen blasted Sunil Narine for 24 off the 10 balls he faced from the West Indian before climbing into Varun Chakaravarthy for a 36 off 12.

Klaasen attributed it to better judgement on the evening and some hard work behind the scenes. 

“Plan was to go straight on this ground. I got my trajectory better, didn't take on too many fielders,” he said.

“Pleased with that. I worked a lot on judging length, it's getting me out a couple of times, so I've had to work on it in the nets a lot.”

He also felt that he was patient in his execution, instead of trying to blast every ball out of the ground. 

"Not trying to hit every ball for six," Klaasen said. "I think that's where I went wrong this season. Hitting the hard length. [Sunil] Narine had a spell there that it was quite difficult to get away and I had to improvise a little bit. So, sticking to your hard length, mix it up and just play with his length is quite important.

"It's been a long season of disappointment and sometimes against your processes. Luckily, I stuck to it and finally I've got a little bit of reward tonight."

Klaasen finished the season as Sunrisers’ leading run-scorer with 487 runs at an average of 44.27 and strike-rate of 172.69, but it was not enough to get his team into the playoffs. 

He was, though, grateful that he could at least repay some of his record R49 million retention fee - the highest in IPL history - Sunrisers forked out for his services. 

"I want to thank my family, and the franchise," Klaasen said. "They spend a lot of time and effort and a lot of money into this brand of cricket and we owe it to them to step up to the plate and dish out good performances.

"They've been around for 13, 14 years. And for us, we had a bad start to middle end of the competition and it just didn't look well on the field. 

“For us to turn it around and we've played brilliant cricket over the last three and a half games. And to just give back to them as well."