In a yet another one-sided affair in the IPL, the most balanced looking side Delhi Capitals defeated in form Royal Challengers Bangalore by a huge margin of 59 runs in Dubai.
Touted to be one of the best clashes of the season, the game got off to a good start as Delhi’s openers, after being sent in to bat first made good use of the opportunity and made 67 runs in the first seven overs.
From there on, RCB could only play the catching game as the Australian Marcus Stoinis in the batting and South African Kagiso Rabada in the bowling departments made sure that Delhi packs yet another punch to record their fourth win out of five games.
In this segment called Hits and Flops of the game, Five big influence players would be discussed to give a wholesome analysis of what went wrong and right for both the teams.
After a good start, Delhi had lost three quick wickets in an interval of just 22 runs which had come of 29 deliveries. The three wickets were of two set batsmen in Prithvi Shaw and Shikhar Dhawan while the third one was of the captain Shreyas Iyer who had been in great form in the last game.
In such a situation, when the runs were hard to come by and wickets were continuously falling, Stoinis started playing his natural counter-attacking game instead of going the usual way of playing few balls to understand the situation. This was the best ploy as he found an able partner in Pant and the duo added 91 runs off just 41 deliveries for the fifth wicket.
But Stoinis didn’t just stop here. After Pant got out, he again combined with Shimron Hetmyer and took the total to 196. In his innings of 53* of 26 balls, Stoinis hit six boundaries and two maximums.
While Stoinis turned out to be the real Ace for the Capitals in the batting department, the bowling hero was Kagiso Rabada. He not only got the opposition captain Virtat Kohli out at the right moment in the first over of his second spell but also took no time removing the tail-enders and ending the match soon.
At the end of the game, Rabada had figures of 4/24 in his quota of overs and was one of the chief architects of the Capitals’ victory.
It was quite after some time that Rishabh Pant played an innings that was worth the wait. Although not explosive in his approach, Pant played second Fidel to Stoinis, making sure that many wickets do not fall.
In his innings of 37 runs of 25 balls, Pant hit three fours and two sixes to make sure that the acceleration of the score was maintained. His balanced approach towards the game meant that he gave many strikes to Stoinis to face the balls.
It doesn’t happen often that you see AB de Villiers in the list of flops as Mr. 360 degree couldn’t quite control his shot off the ball of countryman Anrich Nortje, giving an easy catch to Shikhar Dhawan in the slips.
In his small halt at the crease, de Villiers faced problems as he was roaming did not announce his replacement. Arguably the number one batsman in T20s, made only 9 runs off six deliveries, failing to deliver in a match that he was supposed to lead.
The English all-rounder finally became a part of the playing 11. But that was not enough as firstly in bowling and then in batting, Ali couldn’t do much. While in bowling he gave away precious 21 runs in just two overs, he wasn’t successful in batting either. The 33-year-old Birmingham born scored just 11 runs off 13 balls in the game.
With this win, Delhi has now reached the top spot on the points table and it would boost the confidence of the players who would be rejuvenated to face Rajasthan Royals on 9th October. RCB on the other hand would like to sort out the silly mistakes when they face in-form Super Kings on 10th October.
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