Given the form they have shown in the previous encounters, Kings XI Punjab will fancy their chances to continue the momentum against an embattled Delhi Daredevils outfit.
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The Debut: Making his IPL debut for the Daredevils, England white-ball specialist Liam Plunkett looked right at home in front of the Delhi crowd from the outset.
Despite Boult and the bowling unit holding the Kings to 143 runs, Delhi fell short by four runs.
Ankit Rajpoot was adjudged Man of the Match.
Returning to his home city franchise, skipper Gautam Gambhir would look to get his scoring touch back, after a hugely successful stint at Kolkata Knight Riders. As of now, Daredevils and Kings XI have reached to this match after playing 5 games each. Even though they have restricted teams to sub-par totals, their death bowling has put them in trouble. The match eventually went to a close when 4 runs were required off the last ball but Iyer couldn’t middle it and got caught to Finch at the long-off.
Mujeeb finished with an important 2 for 25 in his 4 overs.
After Liam Plunkett sizzled in his debut with 3/17, paving the way for the batsmen to chase a relatively smaller target of 144. Karun Nair’s scores 34 runs from 32 balls would be the top-score of the innings, while Proteas batsmen David Miller’s 26 would be the second-highest score. All three of those wickets came at three different and crucial stages of the match. Some are saying that Delhi shouldn’t have taken the match till the last over which led to the loss while others have, practically, written off the team.
But Shreyas Iyer put on a fantastic display to steer his side to the brink of an unlikely victory, producing a knock of 57. Barinder Sran picked up a wicket and bowled an economical penultimate over of the match.
“It was a conscious decision to give the ball to Mujeeb”.
Questions will be asked about Gautam Gambhir’s captaincy as he chose to bowl out Amit Mishra at the cost of 33 runs with the leg spinner bagging no wickets while Glenn Maxwell and Rahul Tewatia afforded a single over each but conceding ten between them. Besides Gayle, the duo of KL Rahul and Karun Nair has been the mainstays of the Punjab batting. The Kings XI continued their winning run with 5 wins out of 6 and replaced the Chennai Super Kings at the no. 1 position on the points table.
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Trent Boult took the wickets of Tewatia and Tye in the final over as Punjab ended their innings for 143/8. Has just 85 runs now in the tournament at an average of 17.
