DELHI CAPITALISE
Pant and Co. pummel Sunrisers by eight wickets
Dubai, Sept. 22: Delhi Capitals rode on a brilliant fast bowling performance from their South African duo Anrich Nortje and Kagiso Rabada to pulverise wooden spooners Sunrisers Hyderabad by eight wickets as they took a giant leap towards Indian Premier League play-offs on Wednesday.
Capitals produced topnotch performance in their first match of the second phase of this year’s IPL to eke out the easy win in 17.5 overs in their pursuit of a modest 135-run target.
It was only possible after fast furious Nortje bowled at 150 clicks to finish with 2 for 12 and was ably supported Rabada (3/37) and Axar Patel (2/21) in a brilliant bowling effort.
Last edition’s runnersup are now well and truly in contention for clinching a play-off berth with 14 points from nine games while SRH with two points are all but out of the competition.
DC started their chase on an aggressive note with Shikhar Dhawan and young Prithvi Shaw (11 off 8) adding 20 runs in 17 balls before the latter was caught by Kane Williamson off Khaleel Ahmed as the batsman went for an extravagant shot over mid-wicket.
Dhawan was unperturbed as he continued his attacking batting and slog swept Rashid Khan over deep midwicket for a maximum in his first over.
While SRH batsmen struggled, Dhawan made batting look easy on the wicket as he then pulled a Jason Holder delivery on to the square leg fence.
Swing bowler Sandeep Sharma was then taken to task by Dhawan as he hit him for back-to-back boundaries in the 10th over take DC to 69 for one.
But Dhawan paid the price for being too aggressive when he was holed out by Abdul Samad off the bowling of Rashid as the left-hander went for a slog sweep over deep square leg in search of a six. Dhawan’s runs came off 37 balls and was laced with six boundaries and one hit over the fence.
Shreyas Iyer (47 not out off 41) continued to bat freely and in the company of skipper Rishabh Pant (35 off 21) took DC home with 13 balls to spare.
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