Delhi Capitals won the toss and opted to bowl first. It all seemed to be going according to plan as RCB lost three wickets with just 40 runs on the board.
But then Glenn Maxwell got stuck in to score a 34-ball 55. It was a vital innings because even though wickets were falling at the other end, RCB’s scoreboard kept ticking along at a fine rate.
However, when Maxwell was dismissed in the 12th over, one wasn’t quite sure what kind of total RCB would end up with. But then Dinesh Karthik, as he so often has this season, started teeing off in an awe-inspiring fashion.
When Karthik is in this kind of form, he is unstoppable because he has the knack for picking the gaps in the field. So it isn’t just about brute power but also about manipulating the field. As his strokes started coming off, RCB accelerated from middling total territory to super competitive total.
If he continues batting in this manner, it might be hard to keep him out of the race for the T20 World Cup later in the year.
The RCB keeper-batsman, who was dropped on 5, scored a superb unbeaten 66 off 34 balls and shared a fine match-changing partnership with Shahbaz Ahmed, who made 32 off 21 balls. The duo pushed the RCB total to 189/5 at the end of their 20 overs.
From a bowling perspective, Shardul Thakur (4-0-27-1) had a decent out but Mustafizur Rahman (0/48) and Kuldeep Yadav (1/46) took a hammering.
In reply, Delhi needed a good start to their chase and they got it courtesy of David Warner, who scored 66 off 38 balls before being dismissed thanks to a good review by RCB. Wanindu Hasaranga trapped him lbw and that was the moment when the game started moving towards RCB.
Mitch Marsh, who was got back into the playing XI today, played a strange innings of 14 off 24 balls and it all went downhill for DC after that. The innings robbed Rishabh Pant’s team of momentum and they weren’t able to recover from that.
Regular wickets didn’t help their cause either as RCB won by 16 runs in the end.
For RCB, Josh Hazlewood (3/28) and Mohammed Siraj (2/31) were in fine form and that did the trick to lift the team to the third spot in the points table.
