IPL 2016: Delhi defeat league leaders Hyderabad to jump to third

ByArun S Kaimal, SportsCafe Editor

05/12/2016

Delhi Daredevils regained their spot in the top 4 of the league with a commanding 7-wicket victory over Sunrisers Hyderabad at Vishakhapatnam on Thursday. Earlier, Warner failed to capitalize on his start, and Amit Mishra pulled the game back for Delhi before restricting the home side to 146 runs.

Brief scores: SRH 146/8 in 20/20 overs (Warner 46(30), Dhawan 34(37), Mishra 2/19) lost to DD 150/3 in 18.1/20 overs (de Kock 44(30), Pant 39*(26), Henriques 2/19) by 7 wickets

While Sunrisers fielded an unchanged line-up, Delhi made sweeping changes to their team after losing two consecutive matches – while captain Zaheer Khan was out with an injury, Billings, Brathwaite and S Nadeem also were left out the squad. In came Mayank Agarwal, JP Duminy, J Yadav, Coulter-Nile to replace them.

JP Duminy, who was the stand-in captain in Zaheer's absence, won the toss and put the Sunrisers in to bat. "Good track, want to get good use of it,” he said, and the first innings sure proved to be a good contest between bat and ball.

1. No stopping this man Warner

SRH started slowly enough. It seemed to be a good track when Jayant Yadav and Coulter-Nile bowled a very tight opening spell. Not a single boundary came in the first three overs as they mixed up the bowling well to keep Dhawan and Warner guessing. But the dam broke in the fourth over when Shami was brought in. The first assault came from Dhawan who flicked the second ball beautifully for a four. Then David Warner, who had scored only 6 off 8 so far, went on the rampage scoring 27 runs off the next 6 balls. He sent Shami for two consecutive fours, and welcomed Jayant Yadav with two fours and as six in his first three balls. Yadav had the last laugh finally when he came back for the 9th over and castled Warner just 4 runs short of a 50. With that score, Warner became the second batsman to score 500+ runs in three consecutive IPL seasons after Chris Gayle.

2. No stopping Mishra as well

Amit Mishra is the second highest all-time wicket-taker in IPL history, and the under-rated bowler showed why once again today. He first got Dhawan exactly when he must have wanted to accelerate after biding is time so far. In the last ball of the 13th over, he bowled a seam-up delivery that sped in towards Dhawan at 114 kmph. The batsman saw it coming, but could not do much other than loop it to midwicket. Mishra returned in the 15th over to take out Yuvraj. Yuvraj sent his first googly for a wonderful six over long-on, but Mishra persisted with the googly next ball, switched to seam-up next, back to a googly, and fired in a seam-up delivery again in the last ball. Yuvraj reacted, but reacted too early as the ball caught the leading edge and ended up as an easy catch to Rishabh Pant. The SRH innings never took off after that as they scored only 33 runs in the last 5 overs to end at 146/8.

3. de Kock gives Delhi a solid start; Moises pulls SRH back

Last time Quinton de Kock got off to a start, he scored a 50, but Delhi lost to the Kings XI. This time, there was no 50, but his early innings blitz put Delhi Daredevils in the driving seat from the very start. A good 55-run partnership for the second wicket with Karun Nair had Delhi requiring just over 6 and a half runs an over for the win. But Moises Henriques had other plans.

On the second ball of the 10th over, Henriques removed Karun with a beautiful slow yorker. It didn’t look all doom and gloom right then with de Kock still at the crease. But that security lasted only for 3 balls as de Kock was sent packing by the Australian pacer, and suddenly the target started to look a little bit steep, especially with new batsmen Rishabh Pant and Sanju Samson in the middle. Too bad he dropped Samson later in the match.

4. SRH lose the plot as Mustafizur flops

Of all the teams batting first in this season’s IPL, Sunrisers have the best win-loss ratio while defending a target. Mustafizur Rahman has been a key factor for them in each of those wins. But tonight, somehow he went off boil and Hyderabad never made inroads into the Delhi batting. First de Kock dealt with the left-armer in comfortable fashion, then it was Pant’s turn. The strategy from Delhi was simple, dispatch the one loose ball “The Fizz” bowls per over and rotate strike on the other deliveries. The plan worked like a charm with Mustafizur never finding his usual rhythm, and with DD always staying in touch with the required rate. At the end, Pant and Samson took the away side to a victory with 11 blls to spare.

IPL 2016: Delhi defeat league leaders Hyderabad to jump to third

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