DC has not been able to achieve consistency in IPL 2024. After their initial losses, they won back to back matches yet they again looked out of sorts against KKR. Jake Fraser-McGurk has changed their fortunes with bat but when he fails, entire batting order has been unable to perform at even decent level. Well, in their crucial bout against RR, JFM again gave them a stunning start to upset RR, who have been invincible till their previous match against SRH.
Twice, RR have failed to restrict opposition teams below 200 and chase the targets down. Against SRH, they could have won it on the last ball but here they left the fight by 16th over. Going into the details, RR have won the toss and elected to field first. Jake Fraser-McGurk smashed their bowlers around the park and scored 50 off just 19 and got out to a full toss by Ravichandran Ashwin. Before that, he smashed Avesh Khan for 28 runs in an over.
Abishek Porel came good and scored 65 runs from 36 balls after JFM got out. Among the rest, Tristan Stubbs(41) pushed the scoring rate in final overs to give DC, 221/8 score on the board. Ravichandran Ashwin(3/24) ended up with best bowling figures for RR. In the chase, Rajasthan lost Yashasvi Jaiswal(4) in the first over and Jos Buttler(19) did not prove to be effective.
Sanju Samson with Riyan Parag tried to pace the chase and take RR home. But he fell after scoring 86 runs from 46 balls. RR had a chance with him batting throughout but he lacked any considerable support after Parag got out. Shubham Dubey(25) needed to produce even more than he could. Donovan Ferreira and Rovman Powell failed to finish as well. Hence, RR ended the innings by scoring 201/8 in their 20 overs. Kuldeep Yadav(2/25) did his best for DC.
DC won the match by 20 runs and joined the 12-pointer league in the middle muddle. They could push LSG to sixth position while CSK and SRH continue to be 3rd and 4th. This DC win has opened up the table and RR seems to be back to their 2023 form, where they looked invincible and suddenly, lost the rhythm towards the end. But DC have only two more games while others have 3. Let’s see what SRH does in their next against LSG on 8th May.