DC has been struggling in IPL 2023. After 5 back-to-back losses they found back-to-back wins. DC won twice by restricting their opponents to low scores. They won against KKR after restricting them to score 127 and chased them in last over. Against SRH, again they scored low but SRH failed to chase them down. DC looks to gain momentum from these two wins, this season.
DC won the toss and elected to bat first. Bhuvaneshwar Kumar did not allow batters to get any freebies. He took Phil Salt wicket and gave only 5 runs in his 2 overs. David Warner(21), Mitchell Marsh(25) tried their best to score freely but powerplay got wasted. Manish Pandey(34) and Axar Patel(34) saved DC innings from being an absolute disaster. Finally, DC scored 144/9 in 20 overs. Washington Sundar(3/28), T Natarajan(1/21) bowled well for SRH. But Bhuvaneshwar Kumar gave away only 11 runs in his 4 overs and took 2 wickets. He could have easily ended up with 2/7 or 3/7 figures as the last ball catch got dropped. He just showed how he can control an innings on a slow pitch.
SRH batsmen did not show much intent to accelerate. Harry Brook(7) failed again and Rahul Tripathi scored only 15 runs from 21 balls. Mayank Agarwal scored 49 runs from 39 balls but did not find his rhythm. DC bowlers did not let SRH batsmen get easy boundaries. In the innings SRH without scoring boundaries for more than 28 balls. Heinrich Klaasen(31) tried his best but he has been left a lot to do from batters higher up the order. Axar Patel(2/21), Kuldeep Yadav(1/22), Anrich Nortje(2/33), Ishant Sharma(1/18) took wickets for DC.
Mukesh Kumar had to defend 12 runs in the last over. He did it successfully for DC. SRH fans and captain Aiden Markram criticized the lack of intent to score quickly in the powerplay by batsmen. Somehow, even at home, SRH batsmen looked uncomfortable. Their team used to be perfect at home with slow pitches and win away with batsmen taking on bowlers.
David Warner did a great job for them at the top and Kane Williamson on the slow pitches. Looks like SRH needs to find a settled combination to even give fight in next 7 matches. DC also had a bad start with 5 losses and their batting doesn’t look settled. But they could win two matches with bowling. Let’s see how these two teams will go in their next feature as they meet again in Delhi.
Can you guess Samantha age from this pic?