Delhi Capitals got a vital win against Punjab Kings at the DY Patil Stadium. Both the teams were level on points after 12 games and this was a mini qualifier for them. This is the first time that Delhi got two consecutive wins in this year’s IPL, which has now taken them to the 4th spot with 14 points. Delhi will be the favourite to qualify if they win their next match as they have a good net run rate. On the other side, PBKS had things under their control when they restricted DC to 159.
But in the second innings, their batting collapsed against some quality spin bowling of Delhi. In the end, they fell short by 17 runs and their chance of qualifying now seems to be very low. PBKS skipper who got out for a duck said that their batters let his team down.
“We didn’t bat well. Between overs 5 and 10, we lost too many wickets and that’s where we lost the game. I thought it was definitely chase-able for the batting we have and the wicket wasn’t as bad as it seemed. We just lost too many wickets between the 5th and 10th over and lost the game there. I think we haven’t yet played our best cricket yet and we look forward to doing that in the last game,” the Punjab Kings skipper added.
Let’s look at the major talking points from the match –
A confusing late call from Warner cost his wicket –
David Warner had a new opening partner with him in this game in the absence of Prithwi Shaw. Sarfaraz Khan was about to take strike first up but after he saw Livingstone was going to ball the first over, Warner desperately called Sarfaraz to go to the non-striker’s end as he would take the strike. Sarfaraz did not look happy at that time. However, that late call was not the right one as Warner got a thick outside edge off the very first delivery and got out for a golden duck.
Livingstone does it with the ball
The Englishman has had a stellar season with the bat for Punjab Kings. In this game, he showed what he can do with the ball. He got enough help from the pitch as a spinner and took the most important wicket of David Warner with the very first ball. He became only the fourth spinner in the tournament’s history to pick up a wicket with the first delivery of a match. Later on, he picked up Rishabh Pant and dangerous Rovman Powell to finish his spell with 3/27 from four overs.
Jitesh Sharma the lone warrior
After getting a solid start, PBKS lost their way in the middle phase of the chase. DC spin duo Kuldeep and Axar totally dominated in that period and picked up 2 wickets apiece. Jitesh arrived and started to counterattack. The wicket-keeper batsman smashed a 44 runs knock off 34 balls to give some light of hope to the Punjab fans.
4-fer for Lord Shardul
It was a terrific game with the ball for Shardul Thakur as he almost single-handedly turned the game around in the favour of Delhi. The fast bowling all-rounder took the crucial wicket of Shikhar Dhawan in the last ball off the powerplay. He also picked up Jitesh Sharma’s wicket with the knuckleball when the batter was looking in terrific touch to help PBKS chase down the total. In the end, he finished by picking up 4 sculps.
