NEW DELHI: Delhi Daredevils's batting line up dropped like flies as the home team are in need of a miracle if they are to salvage something out of the 95 run total they have put on board in their IPL match against a spirited Royal Challengers Bangalore side at the Feroz Shah Kotla Stadium here on Sunday.
RCB and Mitchell Starc took off exactly from where they left off in their previous match against the Rajasthan Royals as the left arm pacer trapped the in-form Shreyas Iyer in front of the stumps in the very first over with an inswinger.
Mayank Agarwal would have been a very relieved man at the sight of the ball left leaving his bat to race past the square leg boundary in the second over. The opener had just taken his score past one after failing at that mark in all three of his previous matches. But this time, it was turn of others around him to collapse while he stood ground.
The hopes that skipper Jean-Paul Duminy will once again build with the youngster, like he did with Iyer last time out, a formidable total for the home side was taken out off question when the South African stretched his willow at the newly introduced David Wiese and edged the ball to Dinesh Karthik behind the stumps.
Disappointment of losing their skipper was brief as it was negated by the home support's eagerness of seeing record signing Yuvraj Singh take guard, but that feeling too did not last long. Varun Aaron, a former Daredevil who replaced Yuzvendra Chahal in the playing 11, accounted for him and Angello Mathews as well in back-to-back deliveries to push the opponents on to the backfoot reeling at 39 for four in the seventh over.
Agarwal and wicket-keeper batsman Kedar Jadhav were involved in a desperate mission to steady the ship in the fifth wicket but 25-year-old Iqbal Abdulla beat Agarwal as he fell to an easy stumping by Karthik.
From then on, it was wrapping up the proceedings for RCB with Starc picking up a couple more scalps as the Daredevils tail-enders also did not provide much of a resistance.
The RCB supporters in the stands chanted the name of AB de Villiers as the DD collapse took place, but they will have to be contend with limited fireworks from him with Daredevils seemingly failing to mount much of a challenge for the visitors.