Finance
The Delhi Capitals put on an amazing bowling display on Wednesday at the Narendra Modi Stadium, bowling out the Gujarat Titans for only 89 runs and setting up their six-wicket victory. Ishant Sharma claimed two significant wickets during the power play, and Mukesh Kumar shone with 3-14.
The ball stayed low, came on the batters slowly, and gripped a little bit for the spinners on a black-soil pitch that was used for the first time this season. With GT on a very tight leash, all of this was perfect for DC bowlers to bowl economical stints. With the exception of Kuldeep Yadav, every bowler was among the wickets, and Mukesh had his highest-ever IPL bowling stats.
Captain Rishabh Pant, who giggled at the toss and decided to bowl first, used his bowlers very well, taking two catches in addition to making several quick stumpings. DC was also quite skilled in their fielding. In response, cameos from Shai Hope, Abishek Porel, and Jake Fraser-McGurk quickly ended the chase in 8.5 overs.
With the significant win in Ahmedabad, DC overtakes GT and moves up to sixth position in the points table. GT’s lowest total since joining the IPL in 2022 is presently 89 after being bundled out. Their previous IPL low total, which coincidentally happened to be against DC in Ahmedabad last year, was 125.
After Shubman Gill hit two clean fours earlier, Ishant delivered the opening blow by forcing him to drive straight to cover. In an attempt to hoick over Mukesh, Wriddhiman Saha was chopped down to remove his middle stump.
When Sumit Kumar brilliantly struck Sai Sudharsan, who had just made a frantic dive to punch and cream the drive off Khaleel Ahmed for back-to-back boundaries, rushing in from short mid-wicket, GT found itself in even more danger.
David Miller got a small inside edge off Ishant in the same over, and Pant dove all the way to his left to take a low catch. Pant was successful in having the judgment reversed on review. Khaleel then delivered a maiden over as GT concluded the power-play at 30/4.
It became 47/5 soon as Abhinav Manohar tried to push at an outside off-stump delivery from Tristan Stubbs and Pant, with a child-like smile, was quick to dislodge the bails for completing the stumping.
A ball later, impact player Shahrukh Khan stepped down the pitch to pull off Stubbs, but missed it and Pant, despite not gathering it cleanly, completed the stumping as the ball bounced off his gloves to hit the stumps.
Rahul Tewatia went for the slog-sweep against Axar Patel, but the ball turned in to trap the batter lbw. With umpire’s call showing the ball clipping side of leg-stump, Tewatia had to depart as GT continued to slide.
Mohit Sharma tried to break free, but holed out in the deep off Khaleel. Rashid Khan, who hit a four before the half-way mark, hit the first six of the innings by launching Kuldeep over extra cover for six. But in a bid to slash a short ball from Mukesh, Rashid gave a faint outside edge behind to Pant. A ball later, Mukesh castled Noor Ahmad to end GT’s innings in 17.3 overs.
In an attempt to chase a meager ninety, Fraser-McGurk struck first, lofting Sandeep Warrier for six and four, before slicing twice off Spencer Johnson for the same outcome. His brief but explosive knock came to an end when he flicked a ball off of Johnson to mid-wicket for 20 off 10 balls.
In the third over, Warrier claimed his first wicket when Prithvi Shaw misplayed a well-placed bouncer, causing the ball to bubble to short third man. Before Warrier castled him, Porel was having fun punching and pulling for a four and two sixes.
Hope scored three fast boundaries with a combination of brilliant flicks and flat-bat strokes, then he reverse-swept to backward point off Rashid. Pant kept up his stellar form by hitting Noor Ahmed for four runs off of a drive while dancing down the field to clear long-off for six.
Sumit thumped Noor for a brace of fours, second of which came off a bottom-edge, which also turned out to be the winning runs for DC to complete the chase in 53 legal deliveries and see their net run-rate rise from -0.975 to -0.074.
Brief Scores: Gujarat Titans 89 in 17.3 overs (Rashid Khan 31; Mukesh Kumar 3-14, Ishant Sharma 2-8) lost to Delhi Capitals 92/4 in 8.5 overs (Jake Fraser-McGurk 20; Sandeep Warrier 2-40) by six wickets.
Source:IANS
