The match between the Mumbai Indians and the Delhi Capitals was the clash of table-toppers of the ongoing season and Rohit’s side proved its might on the night and proved to be too classy for the Delhi capitals. Delhi was not awful in its performance and was done in by the sheer pedigree of the Mumbai team.
Here we dissect the best and worst performances of the night
Krunal has been chipping in with valuable contributions with the bat and key wickets in the middle overs for Mumbai in this season but on the night when the pair of Trent Boult and James Pattinson failed to pick too many wickets with the new ball, Krunal was into the wickets column very early in his spell.
He trapped Ajinkya Rahane stuck on backfoot inside the crease to provide Mumbai a big breakthrough as Rahane was looking in ominous touch and had hit a couple of his signature drives through offside.
He came back in the middle phase of the game and scalped out the big fish in the form of Delhi Capitals’ captain Shreyas Iyer who was looking well set to take the game away from Mumbai. Krunal has been a linchpin of the Mumbai side over the past few years and Rohit has used him intelligently as a horse for the course.
Mumbai needed a calm head to get the job done while chasing after Raba got the better of Isha Kishan in the 18th over and once again Krunal put his hands up to steer the team away from any chance of hiccup. He remained not out till the end and fittingly hit the winning runs by pulling Marcus Stoinis over the infield.
Quinton regained his lost touch a bit late in the season but there has been looking back since his crucial knock against the Sunrisers Hyderabad. The target the Delhi had given for the Mumbai Indians to chase was not a stiff one but it needed a batsman to set the platform so that the side does not have to deal with what the CSK batsmen have been facing so far in the season.
Rohit went cheaply in a rather uncharacteristic fashion but Quinton was composed and was unfazed about the quality of the Delhi’s pace bowling. Quinton looked in his explosive form and was particularly severe on anything short bowled to him and he let his intentions known to his fellow countrymen Anarchy Nortje, hitting him for two huge sixes off his rising deliveries.
Although he got out immediately after scoring a fifty the foundation he had built was good enough for the likes of Suryakumar Yadav and Ishan Kishan to shut the door for any chance of an upset from the Delhi Capitals.
Suryakumar has been known for his touch stroke playing and the commentator Ian Bishop who was calling the game compared his batting style to that of Sri Lankan great and the head coach of Mumbai Indians Mahela Jayawardena. Suryakumar Yadav has been piling on the runs and in the last few seasons, he has owned the stage of the IPL.
The targets in excess of 160s have not been easy for teams to chase so far in this season but the ease with which he guided the team to ultimately win it easily was reminiscent of the kind of batsman he has developed into.
He has all shots in his arsenal and made good use of all of that against the Delhi spinners. His batting style and tactic against R Aswin was one of the highlights of the batting innings from the Mumbai camp.
Suryakumar is one of the widely-discussed cricket in the IPL and he is doing no harm to his chances to make it big and seal a place in the Indian T-20 squad with a performance like the one against the Delhi Capitals.
Prithvi Shaw has shown good form in the IPL 2020 so far and the DC team management would have hoped for a similar return from the swashbuckling opener. The Capitals were without Rishabh Pant and hence a lot was riding on Prithvi Shaw as an in-form batsman of the side.
However, the challenge was bigger than he had faced in the season so far and he had to attempt both aggressive strokes playing along with conserving his wicket. Sadly, for the Capitals, he could do nothing and the class of Boult with the new ball exposed the weakness in his technique once again.
The side-by-side comparison with the way of his dismissal and how Ajinkya Rahane played in a similar way explained the flaw in his technique where his head is falling over and subsequently his batting is losing proper access to the balls coming into him.
Prithvi Shaw is young and promising but he would do well to realise that his journey as a great player will only begin when he starts to conquer quality bowlers.
Hardik has not bowled in the season so far and is playing as a specialist batsman and hence the responsibility on his shoulder is bigger than it used to be. He has played a few good cameos in this season so far but has not been able to go big and score long innings like he was doing in the last season of the IPL.
Hardik has developed a lot as a batsman and he will have to show his class a specialist batsman to stake claim a place in the side purely on his batting might, something he lacks in critics’ eyes.
Hardik is too good a player with the bat in hand to be classified as a dasher and hence the match against the Delhi Capitals was a golden opportunity to stamp his maturity as a batsman. He got out playing a nothing shot on an innocuous Marcus Stoinis’ delivery and that gave a sniff to the Shreyas Iyer’s side. Thankfully for the team, Krunal and Pollard got them home but Hardik missed a chance to show his composure.
Delhi Capitals were not abysmal with the bat or with the ball but the sheer depth in the Mumbai Indians camp weighed them down. The batsmen were choked by Boult to start with the new ball and they could not recover with batsmen faking to convert their good start. The bowling tried its best but again Mumbai’s batting might was too strong to be breached by the bowlers who were also not helped by fielders who were having a definite off day in the field.
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