The Haryana leggie, whose three wickets broke the back of Pune middle-order, said the Daredevils will approach the upcoming games with the same aggression.
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Delhi Daredevils celebrate the dismissal of Kings XI Punjab batsman Glenn Maxwell during their Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket match against in New Delhi, India, Saturday, April 15, 2017.
Saha had scored a century in that final but Kings XI were still tamed by KKR. However, Corey Anderson came to their rescue to help DD raise their stocks to 188. Axar Patel pocketed his highest IPL score of 44, but it was merely academic.
Kings XI Punjab have had a fair bit of travelling to do for their past couple of games and will now head to Hyderabad to face off against the defending champions. This was therefore a contest within a contest. Samson was the first to go and he was quickly followed by Karun Nair. But doing half a job is rarely good enough. Taking cue, Sam Billings hit the top gear and in the next four overs, the Englishman had posted 29 off Delhi’s 41.
“The pitch was slow and we executed the plans well”.
Daredevils boast a strong batting line-up, which is full of all-rounders and will fancy their chances against Punjab bowlers, who did a decent job before being hammered around by the KKR batsmen. In the company of an equally attacking Cummins, Anderson took the Kings’ attack to cleaners, the last two overs bleeding 35 runs, and put Daredevils in a position of strength. Anderson’s unbeaten 39 off 22 balls was particularly damaging for Kings XI. The 40-ball effort contained nine hits to the fence. This was Delhi’s second straight win in the IPL after losing the first match. His erratic lengths, often on the shorter side, were ideal for batsmen looking to exploit the shorter legside boundary. While this will be the two teams’ first matchup against each other this year, Punjab have a better head-to-head against the Daredevils, winning 10 of their 18 total meetings. Then Iyer hit him for two fours in three deliveries soon after Nair’s dismissal. Instead, the twin wickets did little damage to Delhi’s momentum.
Knight Riders’ decision to include Kuldeep Yadav ahead of leg-spinner Piyush Chawla paid off as the left-arm spinner bowled a steady spell of four overs for 23 runs and got the key wicket of Warner.
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The two stayed together for a while, but the runs didn’t come as easily as they would have liked and, as a result, the required run rate just kept climbing up, with the equation, at the halfway stage of the chase, reading 125 runs from 60 balls, as Morgan (22, 20b, 3×4) fell off the last ball of the tenth over.
