CHENNAI: BEFORE the state of Wednesday night’s Indian Premier League match, Delhi Capitals captain, David Warner, had spoken about the importance of a good start while batting. But after restricting to Chennai to a gettable total, Warner himself got out in the first over. In the end, Delhi, who need a lot of dominoes to fall their way to qualify for the knockouts, lost by 27 runs.
He was visibly dejected after his team’s loss and rued the fact that his team did not fight enough and gave away wickets due to poor shot selection. ‘’Back to losing three wickets (early on). We lost a wicket in the first over. Our opening combination is crucial. We lost a wicket to a run-out. We threw wickets away. Put too much on pressure on ourselves.’’ said Warner.
‘’It was a gettable total. To sum it up, we needed a better first six. We couldn’t rotate the strike. We needed to try different things but we couldn’t. When you get a wide half-tracker you can’t hit it to cover. We should have executed better with those wide half-trackers,’’ he added.
Coach Ricky Ponting sang from the same hymn sheet. “We lost two early, then we lost three early and then the spinners came on. We didn’t show any urgency against the spinners. There were about 34 dot balls in the middle of the game and you are never going to win chasing a score if there are that many dot balls through the middle phase,” said a dejected Ponting.
Ponting further insisted that his team had lost wickets in the first over on a number of occasions which in turn put pressure on the batters as they could not exploit the power play. ‘’I think that is the fifth, sixth, maybe seventh time this season where we have lost a wicket in the first over of the game. On one occasion, we lost two wickets in the first over of the game. That is clearly an area that we haven’t got right so far. It is pretty obvious where the game was lost,” said Ponting. Delhi Capitals have 8 points from 11 matches.
RR thrash Kolkata
Yashasvi Jaiswal blazed away to an unbeaten 47-ball 98 as Rajasthan Royals defeated Kolkata Knight Riders by nine wickets in their Indian Premier League match here on Thursday. KKR scored 149 for 8 after being asked to bat first. Yuzvendra Chahal finished with excellent figures of 4/25, continuing his fine run of form. In reply, RR completed the chase in 13.1 overs.
Brief scores: KKR 149/8 in 20 overs (Venkatesh Iyer ; Yuzvendra Chahal 4/25, Trent Boult 2/25) lost to RR 151/1 in 13.1 overs (Yashasvi Jaiswal 98 n.o, Sanju Smason 48 n.o).