Delhi Capitals made light work of an easy chase thanks to a middle-order collapse on Thursday, cruising to a four-wicket victory against a lackluster Kolkata Knight Riders and keeping their IPL play-off ambitions alive.
DC was 84 for five and 113 for six at different points in the innings, but Rovman Powell (33 not out) hit a big shot again to help DC get past the 147-run mark with an over to spare. DC’s Kuldeep Yadav was the hero of the win. He took 4 for 14 when KKR batted, which changed the game.
While DC is sixth with 10 points, KKR is still third from the bottom, and the team changes are a sign that things aren’t going well for the Shah Rukh Khan-owned team.
They lost their fifth game in a row. Is everyone on the same page?
Umesh Yadav (3/24) did his best to defend a total of 146. He made a diving return catch off the first ball of the DC innings to send Prithvi Shaw back.
David Warner (42 off 26 balls) and Lalit Yadav (22 off 22 balls) made 65 for the third wicket, with Lalit Yadav as DC cruised along at 82 for two.
Both set batters were quickly removed; it quickly became 84 for five. Rishabh Pant, the captain of KKR, made a bad shot to bring the team back into the game.
Because of Axar Patel’s (24 off 17 balls) run-out, the score was 113 for six, and there were only five overs left.
One over had to be done by Shreyas Iyer’s non-regular bowler, and Powell took advantage of that by hitting the first ball Venkatesh Iyer threw him for a six. The 17th over led to 18 runs for Delhi, which changed their game.
Later, Kuldeep Yadav’s deception and skill took over, but Nitish Rana’s half-century was enough to save the day for KKR.
There were a lot of changes made to the KKR playing XI, but only Shreyas Iyer (42 off 37 balls) and Rana (57 off 34 balls) tried to get things going.
Rana and Rinku Singh shared a 62-run seventh-wicket stand that kept the two-time champions in the game after they were 83 for six.
Kuldeep, who is having a great season, took the wickets of Shreyas and the dangerous Andre Russell to finish with 4 for 14 at the end of the game. If Yuzvendra Chahal had taken 18 wickets, he would have had 17 now. His performance reminded his old team, which didn’t treat him very well when things were going bad.
Mustafizur Rahaman, not Kuldeep, did the damage in the middle overs. Only two runs were scored, and he took three wickets in the last over.
Everyone could see how Kuldeep used flight in one delivery and then suddenly changed the pace in another. It was surprising that captain Rishabh Pant didn’t finish all of his overs.
In the case of Baba Indrajith, who had been waiting for this day for 10 years, Kuldeep threw a ball, but the batter didn’t reach the pitch of the ball and didn’t get enough height to get caught in the deep.
Sunil Narine (0) was bowled a googly by a left-arm wrist spinner. It turned the other way around, and Sunil Narine was caught on the back foot.
Shayas, the KKR captain, went after delivery to get a kind of under-edge, which Pant grabbed with quick hands.
There were changes in Russell’s speed and length of delivery (0). While the DC captain made a wrong move, they got the desired result.
There was a lot of bad play by Australia’s white-ball captain Aaron Finch at the start of the game. Venkatesh Iyer also got caught by Axar Patel with a bad sweep shot.
In the next part, Rana defied DC and kept KKR from getting all out for less than 100.
