Early strikes from their bowlers did the trick for Delhi against Punjab

The mood in the Delhi Capitals was not ideal for their match against PBKS at Brabourne Stadium on Wednesday evening. With their New Zealand wicket-keeper Tim Seifert also testing positive following Wednesday’s RT-PCR tests to take the number of Covid cases in the team to six, the players were not in the right frame of mind.

Added to that, news came of their match on Friday against Rajasthan Royals in Pune being rescheduled to Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai.

Their head coach Ricky Ponting gave them the confidence before the match and told the team to focus on the game. The positive approach that Ponting wanted his players to adopt on the day yielded the desired results.

The DC bowlers lifted the mood in their camp with disciplined effort, bowling PBKS out for 115, the lowest total in 32 matches so far in the edition. The turning points came with three strikes inside Power Play, each of them to the first overs by off-spinner Lalit Yadav (the fourth of the innings), left-arm medium-pacer from Bangladesh, Mustafizur Rahman (the fifth over) and left-arm spinner Axar Patel (sixth over).

With PBKS captain Mayank Agarwal, back for this match after missing out the previous game due to injury, dominating the opening stand with Shikhar Dhawan, scoring 27 in the first three overs, PBKS were well on course to a big score as this stadium pitch has dished out so far barring the odd low-scoring one.

When DC captain Rishabh Pant brought in Lalit Yadav in the fourth, Dhawan scored his first attacking shot, hitting a full toss past mid-on for four. But, off the next ball that was down the leg-side, the left-handed opener tried to paddle it away only to be caught by wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant.

Rahman replaced Shardul Thakur for the fifth over after the right-arm medium-pacer went for 20 runs in his two overs, courtesy Agarwal’s strokeplay. In continuing to attack the medium-pacer, Agarwal played on to his stumps in the third ball sent down by Rahman, making it 35 for two in 4.3 overs.

The onus of taking PBKS to a big score was on the two Englishmen, Liam Livingstone and Jonny Bairstow, both batsmen reputed to hit big and quick. Livingstone has shown in the previous matches how destructive he can be while Bairstow has still not fired in the tournament.

However, Pant made another bowling change, bringing in Patel for the sixth over and straightaway dragged Livingstone out with his third ball, beat him as he played for the turn and was nowhere near the pitch of the ball. Livingstone was duly stumped by Pant to have PBKS lose three wickets in the gap of 12 balls and 13 runs.

It soon became four wickets lost in the space of 19 balls and 21 runs when Bairstow pulled left-arm medium-pacer Khaleel Ahmed short ball straight into the hands of Rahman at fine-leg boundary in the first over after the field restrictions were removed.

From such deadly blows, PBKS did not recover as DC nailed them early on and had the match well in control.