IPL 2016: Spinners guide Delhi Daredevils to hat-trick of wins
Eight overs from leg-spinners Amit Mishra and Imran Tahir proved to be the difference on the day as Delhi Daredevils registered their third consecutive win of the tournament, by defeating Mumbai Indians by 10 runs. Earlier, the home side scored 164/4 on the back of a sixty from Sanju Samson.
Brief Scores: DD 164/4 in 20 overs (Samson 60(48), Duminy 49*(31), McClenaghan 2/31) beat MI 154/7 in 20 overs (Rohit 65(48),
With Delhi playing two leg spinners in their line-up, Mumbai Indians needed a good start to chase down the target of 165. However, they received a blow in the second over after Parthiv Patel was beaten by Shreyas Iyer’s throw from the deep square leg in the race to the stumps. Although they lost Parthiv early, skipper Rohit Sharma and Ambati Rayudu made sure that the scoring rate remained healthy by taking the attack to the DD bowlers. The skipper, in particular, took a liking to the gentle left-arm spin of Pawan Negi and smashed him to all parts of the ground in the third over to score 19 runs off the over. Negi never got the ball again.
Rayudu took it forward in the next over and dished out similar treatment to Mohammad Shami to leave the team in a comfortable position of 45/1 with only four overs gone. With the game slowly moving away from them, Zaheer Khan introduced the spin-twins Amit Mishra and Imran Tahir in a bid to restrict the run flow. Mumbai Indians managed just 15 runs from the next four overs as the game looked nicely poised at the end of eight overs, with the reigning champions at 60/1. With runs not coming, Rayudu jumped out of the crease in a bid to smash Mishra out of the ground, only to miss the ball and hear the sound of the ball hitting the timber.
With the leggies bowling in tandem, Mumbai Indians sent left-hander Krunal Pandya up the order instead of right-handers Kieron Pollard and Jos Buttler. The strategy paid divided as Krunal looked comfortable against the leg-spinners and smashed Mishra for a six in the ninth over, before sending Tahir to the fence for a six and four off consecutive balls in the 12th over. The quick-fire innings of 36 off 17 balls ended in the 13th over when Zaheer Khan produced a direct-hit at the non-striker’s end in his own bowling.
With Krunal Pandya back in the pavilion, Mishra returned and outfoxed Buttler to catch him plumb in front of the stumps in the 15th over. Although the spinners were on top, Rohit Sharma kept one end going and brought up his third fifty of the tournament in the 17 over to keep up the defending champions' hopes of a win. Mishra and Tahir gave away 53 runs in their eight overs and took two wickets to leave MI needing 42 runs off the last three overs. Rohit and Pollard took 10 runs off Morris’ 18 over, before scoring 11 runs in five balls of the penultimate over off Zaheer. However, Zaheer removed Pollard off the last ball of his over to give the defending champions a huge task of scoring 21 off the last over.
Hardik Pandya gave a single off the first ball of Morris’ last over to give Rohit Sharma the strike. The Mumbai Indians skipper smashed the South African over long-on for a maximum before a collision between Hardik and Rohit lead to the wicket off the latter. With Pollard and Rohit back in the pavilion, Morris completed the formalities by bowling the rest of the over economically, to guide Delhi to their third consecutive win of the season.
Earlier, after registering two back-to-back wins, a rejuvenated Delhi Daredevils (DD) side welcomed reigning champions Mumbai Indians (MI) to their den in search of registering a hat-trick of wins – a first for them since IPL 2012 - in the tournament. With the Feroz Shah Kotla track having a history of assisting spinners, South African leggie Imran Tahir was drafted in to make his first appearance of the season for Delhi in place of West Indian all-rounder Carlos Brathwaite.
On the other hand, Mumbai Indians arrived in Delhi on the back of a convincing victory over Royal Challengers Bangalore and kept faith with the XI that took to the field last game. Rohit Sharma won the all-important toss and opted to field first seeing the success chasing teams have had in the tournament so far.
Tim Southee ran in and delivered the first ball of the evening. It pitched just outside off and swung back towards the stumps. The ball would have been a perfect one to a left-hander on any other day, but at the striker’s end was Quinton de Kock, who scored a 51-ball 108 in Bengaluru to take the team past Royal Challengers Bangalore. The South African offered the full face of his bat and the ball raced to the ropes behind Southee leaving the mid-off fielder with no chance to stop it. De Kock has been the most dangerous batsman in the Delhi side – scoring 45.65% of the side’s runs in IPL 2016 - and knowing the left-hander’s potency, Rohit Sharma brought Mitchell McClenaghan from the other end. The Kiwi set the batsman up with two back-of-a-length deliveries just outside off, inviting de Kock to play across the line. The left-hander fell
With de Kock back in the pavilion, Mumbai Indians got the upper hand as the runs dried up in the middle. But Mumbai boy Shreyas Iyer, who had scored 0,3 and 0 in this season’s first three matches, brought the crowd back to
The run-rate moved alongside the 6.5 runs per over mark for the rest of the overs before Sanju Samson upped the ante in the 12th over by smashing Harbhajan Singh for a whopping 108m six over long-on. The Keralite added two more boundaries to his kitty before bringing up his fifty off 40 balls in the 15th over.
The wicketkeeper-batsman fell in the 17th over after making 60 off 48 balls after trying to muscle McClenaghan out of the ground, only to perish near the long-off boundary. From where Samson finished, Duminy began and took the team to the fighting total of 164/4 after scoring 49 off 31 balls.
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