Team Delhi continued their winning run as they recorded a convincing win over Team Rajasthan. This win ensured Delhi move to the top of the table once again. Unless, they lose all games from here, the Rishabh Pant-led side should make it to the playoffs.
It was a game where the batters found it tough to get going. Barring Sanju Samson and Shreyas Iyer, no other batsman from either side got a score in excess of 30. The bowlers from both sides made merry but it was the might of the Delhi bowling attack that propelled and guided their side home.
Delhi were inserted into bat first by Rajasthan and the latter got off to a good start as they picked up two wickets in the powerplay. However, skipper Rishabh Pant and Shreyas Iyer shared a 63-run stand to resurrect the innings. Shimron Hetmyer did threaten to take the game away but Rajasthan came back well to restrict the damage in the back half of the innings and Delhi could get just 154/6.
Chasing under 8 runs an over, Rajasthan lost their way in the powerplay and never recovered completely. They were 21/3 at the end of the six-over mark and no batsman could gather any sort of rhythm or momentum to take the game forward. Rajasthan skipper Sanju Samson tried but didn’t find any support from the other end.
Rajasthan kept losing wickets regularly and crawled their way to 121/6 at the end, eventually losing by 33 runs. Here are a few talking points from the game:
Left-arm pace shines for Rajasthan and pick key scalps
The Rajasthan bowling attack is quite left-hand dominated and the pacers came to the party in this game against Delhi. Mustafizur Rahman and Chetan Sakariya impressed quite a bit and halted Delhi’s charge with the bat as they constantly picked key wickets throughout the innings. Mustafizur started the innings but bowled the sole over in the powerplay. However, Sakariya was excellent in the powerplay. He got the wicket of the dangerous Prithvi Shaw in the fifth over to peg Delhi back. He returned with figures of 1/11 from the two overs that he bowled in the powerplay which saw Delhi get 36/2.
After the two early wickets, Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant stitched a solid 62-run stand for the third wicket. Just when the partnership was threatening to break free and put the foot on the accelerator, it was Mustafizur who broke the partnership. He had Pant dragging a short ball back onto his stumps. That wicket helped Rajasthan open one end up and it did put pressure on Iyer at the other end. Sakariya was expensive in his third over as Shimron Hetmyer hit him for a couple of boundaries but he came back really well alongside Mustafizur in the final five overs. The left-arm pace duo conceded just 21 runs in three overs that they bowled at the death. Mustafizur got the wicket of Hetmyer in the 17th over before Sakariya scalped Axar Patel in the 19th over.
Mustafizur finished with figures of 4-0-22-2 while Sakariya had figures of 2/33 from his four overs.
Rajasthan record lowest powerplay score of IPL 2021
Chasing 155, Rajasthan were wreaked early. Liam Livingstone was promoted to opening the batting in the absence of Evin Lewis. The Lancashire batsman has been in red-hot form but he couldn’t make a mark this time around. Avesh Khan had him caught behind off a short delivery. Anrich Nortje struck off his very first delivery as he had Yashasvi Jaiswal nicking one.Avesh and Nortje had combined figures 4-0-17-2 with the new ball before Ravichandran Ashwin came in and picked up the wicket of David Miller. The Tamil Nadu off-spinner beat Miller in flight who stepped down the track and looked to hoick it out of the ground but he missed altogether and was stumped. Ashwin conceded two runs in his only powerplay over while Kagiso Rabada also gave away only two runs as Rajasthan ended the powerplay with a score of 21/3. This score of 21/3 is the worst in this edition of the IPL. Mumbai held the record before when they got 21/1 against Punjab while Chennai had recently got 24/4 against Mumbai.
Sanju Samson stands tall, but alone
The RR batting line-up crumbled. It was a slow pitch but apart from Sanju Samson, none of the batters got going. They lost three wickets in the powerplay and were reduced to 17/3 in the fifth over of the game.Samson stood tall at one end and weathered the storm but he looked scratchy at the start of his innings too. But he held one end up and started stroking the ball nicely once he got his eye in. However, he didn’t have any support from the other end. Mahipal Lomror hung around and got 19 before he holed out at fine leg. He was the only other batsman apart from Samson to get into double figures.Samson fought the lone battle and scored 70 off 53 balls and was unbeaten at the end. The RR skipper’s contribution was almost 58% in this game and RR could’ve been in the game if he would’ve got some support from the other end.
