Despite heading into the contest after having a complete contrasting campaign in the tournament so far, the precariously placed KKR defeated their top-table rivals DC by three wickets in a low-scoring match on Tuesday.
Spinners Sunil Narine (2/18) and Varun Chakravarthy (0/24) did the major damage for the Riders, as they not only kept the brakes on run-scoring but also chipped away at the wickets column. In this instance, Chakravarthy’s excellent variations on a turner forced DC batters to take a few more risks against Narine, who was also bowling superbly on the day and hardly gave away a thing himself.
The two KKR tweakers made the Capitals’ middle and lower order work really hard for their runs and triggered their downfall, as they had to take greater risks for run-scoring. This was best reflected in the fashion that the usually free-flowing Rishabh Pant batted. Pant was DC’s joint top-scorer with a 39, but, so unlike his usual avatar, he took 36 balls to make those.
Notably, lead pacer Lockie Ferguson laid the solid foundation for Narine and Chakravarthy to take advantage of. Ferguson dismissed DC’s in-form and well-set opening batter Shikhar Dhawan (24) and made sure he and his partner Steve Smith (39) were not quite able to maximise the powerplay overs on a surface that was bound to deteriorate. Ferguson later took down Smith, an excellent player of spin, when he was just beginning to get the hang of KKR’s spinners and was aiming to line them up.
The class of Ferguson, Narine and Chakravarthy, and partly KKR debutant Tim Southee (1/29), forced DC batters to go after young Venkatesh Iyer’s part-time seam bowling and allowed him to bag a couple of wickets for 29 runs off his four overs.
Chasing only 128, and importantly having clear knowledge of the surface’s behaviour and gaining approach clarity, the assurance brought about the task of chasing less than 6.5 runs per over. KKR batters expectedly went about the second half with strong composure. Even against DC’s threatening spin twins Axar Patel (0/13) and Ravichandran Ashwin (1/24).
The two class spinners couldn’t quite run through the side as DC desperately required them to. While the track did offer them some turn, hardly any pressure of the asking rate meant that KKR batters could afford to pay them more watchfully.
However, it is not that KKR’s innings was without jitters, as they lost seven wickets along the way. Three of those came against promising young Indian speedster Avesh Khan, who gave away only 13 runs off his three overs.
Experienced pacers Anrich Nortje (1/15), Kagiso Rabada (1/28) also took one apiece. Knowing they can’t open the gates for Axar and Ashwin through risk-taking, KKR went after the third spinner Lalit Yadav and succeeded, taking 35 off his three overs at the cost of just one wicket.
Shubman Gill (30) batted well at the top of the order, as did middle-order batter Nitish Rana, who was the top-scorer for KKR with an impressive unbeaten 36. Towards the end, Narine blasted a cameo of 21 off 10 balls and left nothing to fate about the result.
Brief scores
Delhi Capitals 127/9 in 20 overs (Smith 39, Pant 39; Ferguson 2/10, Narine 2/18) lost to Kolkata Knight Riders 130/7 in 18.2 overs (Rana 36*, Gill 30; Khan 3/13, Ashwin 1/24) by 3 wickets
