Playoff hopes fading for troubled Crusaders in Super Rugby Pacific

NEW DELHI, April 25, (AP): Delhi Capitals survived Rashid Khan’s onslaught in the last over to register an exhilarating four-run victory over Gujarat Titans in the Indian Premier League.

Needing 19 off fast bowler Mukesh Kumar’s final six balls, Rashid (21 not out) clubbed back-to-back boundaries off the first two balls and then a six off the penultimate ball before Gujarat finished at 220-8 in yet another high-scoring thriller in IPL this season.

Captain Rishabh Pant, returning to competitive cricket after his car accident in late December, staked his T20 World Cup claims with a robust unbeaten 88 off 43 balls which propelled Delhi to 224-4 after Gujarat won the toss and chose to field first.

Pant provided a perfect finish to Delhi’s innings when he smashed Mohit Sharma for 31 runs in the last over as the Gujarat fast bowler registered most expensive bowling figures in IPL history with 0-73.

Tristan Stubbs scored a rapid 26 off seven balls and Delhi’s 53 runs off the final two overs were also the most scored by a team in the IPL off the last 12 balls of the innings.

Gujarat skipper Shubman Gill (6) sliced a catch at mid-off off Anrich Nortje’s third ball and got dismissed cheaply in his 100th IPL game before impact player Sai Sudharsan (65) and Wriddhiman Saha (39) brought the chase back on track with a 82-run secondwicket stand.

CRICKET

Delhi came back through spinners Kuldeep Yadav (2-29) and Axar Patel (1-28) in the middle overs before David Miller (55) hit a 21-ball half-century and swung the momentum in Gujarat’s favor.

Miller, who hit three sixes and six boundaries, holed out in the 18th over but Rashid, who escaped a dropped catch before he had scored, countercharged in the last over but just fell short to get Gujarat over the line.

Earlier, Axar Patel’s (66) elevation to No. 3 proved a perfect ploy for Delhi after fast bowler Sandeep Warrier (3-15) had struck thrice in the batting power play and restricted them to 44-3.

Patel and Pant shared 113-run fourth-wicket stand before Patel holed out at long-on after scoring his personal best in the IPL that featured four sixes and five boundaries.

Stubbs then clubbed two sixes and two boundaries off Sai Kishore’s 22-run penultimate over before Pant provided a perfect finish against Sharma in the final over.

Delhi rose to No. 6 with its fourth win in nine games, while Gujarat slipped to No. 7 on inferior net run-rate after losing its fifth game in nine matches.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand, April 25, (AP): After dominating Super Rugby for more than two decades, the Christchurchbased Crusaders have fallen into a funk this season from which they seem unable to extract themselves.

The Crusaders are in last place after nine rounds of the current Super Rugby Pacific season with only one win. They face the fourth-place Melbourne Rebels in the 10th round on Saturday.

The Crusaders’ sudden fall from grace has come with the usual baggage: fan anger and resentment, bitter recriminations from former players and calls for current head coach Rob Penney to go.

The Crusaders’ management have pushed back strongly against critics and pointed out with justification that Penney can’t be expected to carry the can. There are many issues contributing to the Crusaders’ decline and sacking the coach likely won’t turn things around.

“There’s a real opportunity to be thoughtful and logical and just make sure to get the best out of the group and give them all the support you can,” Crusaders chief executive Colin Mainsbridge said. “When you think logically about it, what are your options?”

Sacking the coach is “not a very clever option, no matter how bad things get,” Mainsbridge said. “Unless there’s toxicity or a complete breakdown in trust between players and coaching staff and that’s not the case.”

The Crusaders were Super Rugby champions for seven years in a row until their previous head coach Scott Robertson left after the 2023 season to become All Blacks’ head coach. At the same time a number of their senior players or All Blacks left to take up contracts in Japan or France.

RUGBY

That hollowing out of a championship team has been exacerbated by longterm injuries to All Black Will Jordan and former Wales international Leigh Halfpenny among others. Others such as captain Scott Barrett, All Blacks Tamaiti Williams, Braydon Ennor and David Havili have been sidelined for shorter periods. Barrett and Havili are due to return against the Rebels.

Departures have left the Crusaders to depend on a much less experienced squad than usual. They have struggled particularly to replace All Blacks flyhalf Richie Mo’unga who now is playing in Japan. Rivez Reihana and Riley Hohepa have played in the No. 10 jersey this season.

The 35-year-old former All Blacks flyhalf Aaron Cruden revealed this week he was approached by the Crusaders before the season began but he rebuffed them.

“I’m not sure if I could have helped down there right now anyway,” Cruden said. “Maybe a little bit of experience. But those young guys getting that exposure, I think they’ll certainly be better for it in that Crusaders 10 jersey.”

Mainsbridge agrees that as tough as this season may be, it is building the experience of a new group of Crusaders players.

“People forget that a lot of the great players often have inauspicious starts,” he said. “No journey is ever a straight line from new to greatness. For every player to reach their full potential is the same issue. We are absolutely cognizant of that issue and how we build depth and capability there.”

Penney has remained optimistic throughout, even after the loss to the Force which was a low point of the season.

“There’s a lot of good stuff happening in behind the scenes and I know it doesn’t always appear that way when we’ve had such a topsy-turvy sort of performance and outcome,” he said. “There’s probably three of those games on reflection and possibly four that we could easily have won.”

Every game in round 10 will bear to some extent on the playoffs, notably matches between the Wellington-based Hurricanes and ACT Brumbies, the Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika and the Queensland Reds and Aucklandbased Blues.