Oddly, the 38th game of the IPL 2020 wasn’t exactly a contest between the two teams but one exceptional individual fighting a lone battle on Tuesday night versus a team full of meaningful contributors which is making a belated surge.
In many ways, Kings XI Punjab defeated Shikhar Dhawan who perhaps deserved to end on a winning side after scoring back-to-back tons in IPL- something that has never happened until now in 13 seasons of the tournament.
Opener Dhawan carried his bat for an unbeaten 106 from one end in 61 balls (almost half of the Delhi innings) but didn’t get any support from the other end as no other batsman could even reach 15 runs.
A target of just 165 in 20 overs could not even take the match deep (into the 20th over) against a team which has fumbled to chase seemingly the easiest of targets against less formidable attacks. KXIP comprehensively handed a defeat to DC by 5 wickets that was built with all-round contributions from its players in all departments.
“Very well done to not bring it down to the last over. I got a start and didn’t finish the game, so that’s disappointing for me,” said Nicholas Pooran after scoring 53 runs in 28 balls (6 fours and 3 sixes) which proved to be a decisive knock after the pair of KL Rahul and Mayank Agarwal saw a rare failure together in the same match.
A great start and then Shami the speed breaker
Delhi started brilliantly despite losing opener Prithvi Shaw cheaply once again as they scored 53 runs in powerplay overs. However, instead of accelerating in the middle overs and going bang-bang in death overs (since wickets were in hand), except for Dhawan all the Delhi batsmen struggled to force the pace.
“I feel that we fell around 10 runs short, but we got a lot of learnings from this game,” DC captain Shreyas Iyer said later but the way Punjab batted at least 20 runs were needed more.
Fresh from bowling a memorable Super Over against Mumbai Indians in the last match, senior pacer Mohammed Shami was once again superb in the death overs.
The Capitals were all set for an onslaught (117 for 3 at the end of the 15th over) but the KXIP bowlers led by Shami didn’t allow the freedom to hit as they could manage only 47 in the last five overs. Just 13 runs came from Shami’s last two overs – and he got rid of dangerous duo of Marcus Stoinis and Shimron Hetmyer.
“Shami was coming in after some confidence from the last game. Arshdeep bowled two overs in the powerplay and one over at the death. And he nailed 6 yorkers,” said Rahul after the match.
All ends well when it clicks for Gayle and Maxwell
Chris Gayle’s whirlwind 29 (24 runs came in one over of Tushar Deshpande) and Glenn Maxwell’s 32 off 24 balls also ensured that there was no drama in the middle or death overs for Punjab as they were mostly ahead of required run rate in the match.
Dhawan’s lonely night
In IPL, only on rarest of occasions, a player from the losing side gets the Man of the Match award since there are always more than 2 contenders from the winning side.
However, the day in terms of batting belonged to Dhawan. His century was built around 12 fours, three sixes (SR 173.77) while rest of his team mates managed just two fours and two sixes ((SR 91.52) and this is enough to accentuate that apart from Dhawan none turned up for Delhi during batting.
“I took the responsibility of holding one end up and was also hitting the boundaries when I got the chance. On my Test debut I remember I was scoring this frequently,” said Dhawan after the match. Sometimes, individual brilliance in IPL also goes in vain and tonight was one of those nights in this format.
(Vimal Kumar is a senior sports journalist who has covered multiple cricket world cups and Rio Olympics in the last two decades. Vimal is also the author of Sachin: Cricketer Of The Century and The Cricket Fanatic’s Essential Guide.)
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