Neither Sunrisers Hyderabad nor Delhi Capitals can count batting as their core strength in this IPL. On a surface in Hyderabad where stroke-making wasn’t the easiest on Monday, Delhi’s total was just about enough though to eke out a seven-run victory. Having scored 144/9 after electing to bat, David Warner’s boys managed to restrict Sunrisers to 137/6. It gave Delhi their second consecutive win after suffering losses in the opening five games. Delhi’s victory —the first time that they have successfully defended a total below 150 — was courtesy of a collective effort with the ball. Manish Pandey and Axar Patel’s 69-run partnership also proved to be critical for the visitors.
In a game where the momentum swung like a pendulum, the situation eventually boiled down to the Sunrisers needing 13 runs from the final over. Seamer Mukesh Kumar, an impact sub, kept his composure to give away only five runs in the over. Washington Sundar (24 not out, 15b) had done well to keep SRH in the hunt till the final over but couldn’t quite find the gaps in the end.
Despite Mayank Agarwal (49, 39b) hitting six fours in the powerplay, cashing in on a hint of width outside off-stump, Sunrisers could only reach 36/1 in the first six overs of their chase. The asking rate continued to escalate through the middle phase, with Agarwal and Rahul Tripathi failing to hit a single boundary from the seventh to the tenth over. The sequence finally broke in the 11th over when Agarwal cut a short ball to the right of the deep point fielder for four.
Still, SRH needed 78 runs off the final nine overs. With Tripathi not getting into his groove, the pressure on Agarwal to keep up with the asking rate showed. He charged at Axar Patel, only to be done in by the flight and miscue his shot to Aman Khan at long on.
Three more wickets in quick succession left SRH requiring 56 runs in the last five overs. Just as the game seemed to be slipping away, Washington and Heinrich Klaasen brought the hosts back into the contest. They took 28 runs off the 16th and 17th over, bringing the equation down to 23 from 12 balls. Klaasen’s dismissal in the penultimate over though had a telling impact on the final outcome.
Delhi will be pleased with their victory after another middling effort with the bat. At 49/2 after six overs, they had a decent enough platform to build a substantial score. The foundation was set by Mitchell Marsh, whose 15-ball 25 comprised four fours in one over by left-arm pacer Marco Jansen. There were flicks through the leg-side as well as crisp drives piercing the cover region.
These were seemingly encouraging signs for someone who hadn’t reached double figures this season. The burly Australian had returned scores of 0, 4, 0 and 2 in four previous games, contributing to the underwhelming displays of the batting unit. Delhi desperately needed him to carry on now that he had shown a semblance of form, but another left-arm pacer, T Natarajan, cut short his innings by trapping him leg-before in the fifth over.
Once Marsh was dismissed in the fifth over, the onus was predictably on Warner to provide the impetus. That he hit his first six of the season — a slog sweep against Washington over square leg — on Monday (in his seventh game) is telling of the strange run he’s had. Having connected the slog sweep once, he eyed a similar outcome again but could do no better than picking out Harry Brook at deep backward square leg.
In the same over, Washington went on to dismiss Sarfaraz Khan and Aman, both of whom were guilty of poor execution. While Sarfaraz top-edged an attempted slog sweep that carried to Bhuvneshwar Kumar at deep backward square leg, Aman played a wild heave for Abhishek Sharma to complete a simple catch at cover. In the space of six balls, Delhi had gone from 57/2 to 62/5.
Having conceded 13 runs in his opening over in a season where he hadn’t picked a wicket until Monday, this was the kind of boost that the 23-year-old off-spinner needed.
For Delhi, the dire situation called for a meaningful partnership. Knowing that another wicket at that stage could spell doom, Pandey and Axar chose to accumulate ones and twos with the odd boundary thrown in till the final four overs. It was when Mayank Markande came in for his final over that Axar chose to step on the accelerator, hitting three successive fours in a 15-run over. Their approach paid off in the end.
