Delhi Capitals
Delhi Capitals rode on their South African duo of Anrich Nortje and K. Kagiso Rabada Sunrisers Hyderabad took a giant leap in the Indian Premier League play-offs on Wednesday as they defeated Sunrisers Hyderabad with a wooden spoon by eight wickets.
Capitals did their best in their first match of the second leg of this year IPL Chasing a modest target of 135 runs to seal an easy win in 17.5 overs.
This was made possible only when fast bowler Nortje scored 2 for 12 off 150 clicks and supported Rabada (3/37) and Axar Patel (2/21) in a brilliant bowling effort.
The runners-up of the previous edition are now well and truly in contention to secure a play-off berth with 14 points from nine matches, while SRH are out of the competition with two points.
DC started their chase aggressively Shikhar Dhawan and young Prithvi Shaw (11 off 8) The latter caught adding 20 runs in 17 balls. Kane Williamson away from bowling Khaleel Ahmed Just as the batsman went for an exceptional shot at mid-wicket.
Orange cap Dhawan was unimpressed as he continued his aggressive batting and slogged Rashid Khan for a maximum at deep midwicket in the first over from the Afghan spinner.
While the SRH batsmen struggled, Dhawan eased the batting on the wicket as he then made a Jason Holder Delivery over square leg fence.
Swing bowler Sandeep Sharma was then challenged by Dhawan as he hit the medium pacer on back-to-back boundaries in the 10th over to take DC to 69 for one.
But Dhawan had to pay the price for being too aggressive when he was dismissed by Abdul Samad off Rashid as the left-hander made a slog sweep over deep square leg in search of a six.
Dhawan’s runs came off 37 balls and he hit six fours and a four on the fence.
Shreyas Iyer (47 not out off 41), who played a second fiddle around Dhawan, then held himself up and went on to hit Sandeep Sharma for two consecutive boundaries in the 14th over.
Iyer continued to bat freely and in the company of skipper Rishabh Pant (35 off 21) took DC home with 13 balls to spare.
While Khaleel Ahmed took some pace and bounce off the track, no other SRH bowler managed to trouble the DC batsmen as Iyer and Pant batted with consummate ease.
Iyer hit two fours and as many sixes during his innings, while Pant decorated his innings with three fours and two lofty hits.
Earlier, SRH put on a disappointing batting performance to post 134 for nine.
Nortje and Rabada were brilliant with the ball as they pulled out extra bounce and pace from a relatively short and slow wicket to demolish SRH’s top order.
The script did not work out as SRH wanted to bat after as they dismissed David Warner (0) for no run in the third ball of the innings.
Wriddhiman Co: (18) added 29 runs with skipper Kane Williamson (18) before the former pulled Shikhar Dawan over midwicket off Kagiso Rabada.
Williamson and Manish Pandey Then tried to build the innings, stitching 31 runs for the third wicket, but SRH were soon dealt a blow when their captain gave them a simple catch. Shimron Hetmyer Axar Patel on long off.
Pandey (18) followed and Kedar Jadhav (3) also did not help his cause.
Jason Holder (10) also proved to be a big flop for SRH.
The damage is already done, Abdul Samad (28 off 21, 2×4, 1×6) tried his best to raise the run-rate in the company of Rashid Khan (22 off 19 balls), but that too in search of a quicker run Gone, a miss-time pull to DC skipper Rishabh Pant off top-aging A Rabada.
Rashid’s innings was run out with the help of two fours and a six. Bhuvneshwar Kumar remained unbeaten on 5 runs in 3 balls.
For DC, Rabada took 3 for 37, while Nortje (2/12) and Patel (2/32) took two wickets each.
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